John Steinbeck Quotes

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

I've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter. I have everything in my life that I want. I'm not a walking publicity stunt. I'm not an anarchist, or bitter. I'm not trying to be subversive. I just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and I feel comfortable that way.

I kind of got out of the spotlight and life's never been this good.

I'm alright with being disliked rather than trying to be perfect, because you get to relax then.

I don't try to be anything. I just want to play my game.

All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect. That place is called freedom. It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .

Happiness is found when no one is looking

You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.

We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.

Diogenes found more rest in his tub than Alexander on his throne.

For me, my life goal is to be in a position where I can wear pajamas 24 hours a day. That's what makes me happy.

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.

This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.

When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

People always think that happiness is a faraway thing … something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up.

We can travel a long way in life and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.

Dogs...do not ruin their sleep worrying about how to keep the objects they have, and to obtain the objects they have not. There is nothing of value they have to bequeath except their love and their faith.

The lesson that has been hardest for me to learn: there is nothing to prove.

You don’t need a reason to be happy...your desire to be so is sufficient.

My own ambition, my deepest and truest ambition, is to find within myself someday, somehow, the ability to do likewise, to do NOTHING - and find it enough.

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

There is nothing I can't live without. I learned this attitude when I was a child.

There's no shame in enjoying the quiet life.