Quotes from To a God Unknown

“There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“I should have known […] I am the rain. […] I am the land […] and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“ لا يموت الإنسان ما دام له أثر لم يمت ”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“The first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things that hold a man down.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Rama continued: “I do not know whether there are men born outside humanity, or whether some men are so human as to make others seem unreal. Perhaps a godling lives on earth now and then. Joseph has strength beyond vision of shattering, he has the calm of mountains, and his emotion is as wild and fierce and sharp as the lightning and just as reasonless as far as I can see or know. When you are away from him, try thinking of him and you’ll see what I mean. His figure will grow huge, until it tops the mountains, and his force will be like the irresistible plunging of the wind. Benjy is dead. You cannot think of Joseph dying. He is eternal. His father died, and it was not a death.” Her mouth moved helplessly, searching for words. She cried as though in pain, “I tell you this man is not a man, unless he is all men. The strength, the resistance, the long and stumbling thinking of all men, and all the joy and suffering, too, cancelling each other out and yet remaining in the contents. He is all these, a repository for a little piece of each man’s soul, and more than that, a symbol of the earth’s soul.”
Her eyes dropped and her hand withdrew. “I said a door was open.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Yes, I’ll be glad.” And she said suddenly, “There are some times, Joseph, when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.”
He looked quickly at her in astonishment at her statement of his own thought. “How did you think that, dear?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because I was thinking it at that moment — and there are times when the people and the hills and the earth, all, everything except the stars, are one, and the love of them all is strong like a sadness.”
“Not the stars, then?”
“No, never the stars. The stars are always strangers — sometimes evil, but always strangers. Smell the sage, Elizabeth. It’s good to be getting home.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“وقع ما كنّا نعلم وقوعه ونجهل زمنه، والموت يصدمنا حتى مع علمنا بضرورة حلوله”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“I should have known,” he whispered. “I am the rain.” And yet he looked dully down the mountains of his body where the hills fell to an abyss. He felt the driving rain, and heard it whipping down, pattering on the ground. He saw his hills grow dark with moisture. Then a lancing pain shot through the heart of the world. “I am the land,” he said, “and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.”
And the storm thickened, and covered the world with darkness, and with the rush of waters.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“The wedding was in Monterey, a sombre boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“وما أن اقترب جوزيف حتى سمع أنيناً حاداً وزعيقاً منكراً اقشعر له بدنه، وزاد اقترابه، فرأى فحل خنزير بري عظيم الجسم، أحمر اربد، تساقط الشعر عن كتفيه، كانت أنيابه معقوفة حادة وهو يمزق جسد خنزير آخر صغير، يرتعش، وينزف، ويبعث ذلك الزعيق المنكر، وفي الجانب الآخر رأى جوزيف خنزيرة وخنانيص تدك الأرض بقوائمها وهي تولي أدبارها مذعورة، وقد هالها الرعب وتملّكها الذهول من منظر الوحش الكبير مقبلاً قبل أن يفتك بشقيقها...تناول جوزيف بندقيته من مقرها في السرج ثم دكها وصوّب على جبهة الخنزير، إلا أنه ضحك، وخفض البندقية من يده بعد أن ردّ ضاغط الأمان إلى موضعه وهو يقول:
إن بين يديّ قوة هائلة، كما أنها قاتلة. ولربما كان هذا الفحل أباً لخمسين خنوصاً كما أنه يستطيع أن يكون أباً لخمسين آخرين...فلماذا أقتله؟”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“...um homem tem de ter qualquer coisa a que se ligue, qualquer coisa que ele possa estar certo de encontrar lá de manhã.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Хората винаги вършат непозволени неща, когато са прекалено щастливи.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“1 When the crops were under cover on the Wayne farm near Pittsford in Vermont, when the winter wood was cut and the first light snow lay on the ground, Joseph Wayne went to the wing-back chair by the fireplace late one afternoon and stood before his father.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“مرگ حتی هنگامی‌که میدانیم باید بیاید ما را به وحشت می‌اندازد.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Joseph saw how he could make a gesture with his arms and hands, that would sweep in and indicate and symbolize the ripe stars and the whole cup of the sky, the land, eddied with black trees, and the crested waves that were the mountains, an earth storm, frozen in the peak of its rushing, or stone breakers moving eastward with infinite slowness. Joseph wondered whether there were any words to say these things."
He said, "I like the night. It's more strong than the day.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“ما همه او را دوست داشتیم، اما میان محبت و تنفر فاصله اندکی وجود دارد.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“این زمین مملو از ارواح است، نه؛ ارواح سایه‌های ناتوان واقعیت هستند، آنچه اینجا زندگی می‌کند واقعی‌تر از ماست، ما بسان اشباحی از واقعیت آنیم.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“The mountains sat with their feet in the sea, and the old man's house was on the knees.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“توماس توله گرگی را گرفت و می‌کوشید تربیتش کند، اما در این کار کمتر موفق بود، او می‌گفت: بیشتر به یک آدم شباهت دارد تا حیوان، دلش نمی‌خواهد رام شود و چیزی بیاموزد.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“زندگی به‌آسانی نابود نمی‌شود. انسان تا اشیائی که در آنها تغییر داده است نابود نشود، نمی‌تواند بمیرد. حتی تا زمانی که خاطره‌ی او در ذهن است او نیز همچنان زنده است. مردن انسان امری طولانی و تدریجی است.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Κατά κάποιον τρόπο τον ευχαριστούσε που η υγεία του ήταν κακή, επειδή αυτό ήταν μια απόδειξη πως ο Θεός τον σκεφτότανε αρκετά ώστε να τον κάνει να υποφέρει.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“Δεν ξέρω αν υπάρχουν άνθρωποι που γεννήθηκαν έξω από την ανθρωπότητα ή αν μερικοί είναι τόσο ανθρώπινοι, ώστε να κάνουν τους άλλους να φαίνονται μη πραγματικοί. Ίσως, ένας μικρός θεός να ζει στη γη πότε και πότε.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

“نخستین گور، نخستین خانه‌ها و نخستین بچه‌ها، اینها جزء وطن هستند. اینها چیزهایی هستند که انسان را استوار و پایدار می‌دارند.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from To a God Unknown

About the author

Popular quotes

“His voice was soft as his pet name for me rolled off his gorgeous lips. And the way he looked at me… I could ask for the Hope diamond on a silver platter and I had little doubt he would figure out a way to bring it to me.”
― Meredith Wild, quote from Hard Limit

“There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from A Pair of Blue Eyes

“The country through which we had been travelling for days has an original beauty. Wide plains were diversified by stretches of hilly country with low passes. We often had to wade through swift running ice-cold brooks. It has long since we had seen a glacier, but as we were approaching the tasam at Barka, a chain of glaciers gleaming in the sunshine came into view. The landscape was dominated by the 25,000-foot peak of Gurla Mandhata; less striking, but far more famous, was the sacred Mount Kailash, 3,000 feet lower, which stands in majestic isolation apart from the Himalayan range.”
― Heinrich Harrer, quote from Seven Years in Tibet (Paladin Books)

“Alberto pensó súbitamente, en el bautizo de los perros. Por primera vez, después de tres años, sentía esa sensación de impotencia y humillación radical que había descubierto al ingresar al colegio. Sin embargo, ahora era todavía peor: al menos, el bautizo se compartía.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Time of the Hero

“The Marshall Plan had stopped the Communists, had brought the European nations back from destruction and decay, had performed an economic miracle; and there was, given the can-do nature of Americans, a tendency on their part to take perhaps more credit than might be proper for the actual operation of the Marshall Plan, a belief that they had done it and controlled it, rather than an admission that it had been the proper prescription for an economically weakened Europe and that it was the Europeans themselves who had worked the wonders.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Best and the Brightest

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.