John Steinbeck Quotes

No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe

Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.

I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.

Each time dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

For me, the reason why people go to a mountaintop or go to the edge of the ocean is to look at something larger than themselves. That feeling of awe, of going to a cathedral, it's all about feeling lost in something bigger than oneself. To me, that's the definition of spectacle.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

The real universe has a marvellous and unique quality, inasmuch as it and only it can take us completely by surprise.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it.

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

I am inspired and affected by Aspen, the light and the landscape and the natural world.

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

'Flower' is about the sublime.

Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion.

There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.

My idea of magic doesn't have much to do with stage tricks and illusions. The whole world abounds in magic.

There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower.

I've crossed these sands many times," said one of the camel drivers one night. "But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent." The boy understood intuitively what he meant, even without ever having set foot in the desert before. Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force.

When you get out onto a glacier that's the size of Northern Ireland and it's so vast, and you're standing on top of it and you can see forever, it's so pure and clear that you can see for miles and miles and miles. You really do think, "Wow, there is a god!" You feel very humbled.