Cathy In East Of Eden Quotes

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. ~ John Steinbeck

Aron's training in worldliness was gained from a young man of no experience, which gave him the ability for generalization only the inexperienced can have. ~ John Steinbeck

In a bitter night, a mustard night that was last night, a good thought came and the dark was sweetened when the day sat down. And this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of the first light
that our betters spoke of. ~ John Steinbeck

There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar. ~ John Steinbeck

The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does. ~ John Steinbeck

People always think that because of 'Dr. Quinn' that I just play nice family stuff. But the truth of the matter is that 'East of Eden' was a very successful thing for me in the past. I've played a lot of very evil people in my time. ~ Jane Seymour

Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous. ~ John Steinbeck

Our species ... has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men ... Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man ... And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost. ~ John Steinbeck

There's a passage in John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" that does a pretty good job describing California's rainfall patterns:

The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of 12 to 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come ... ~ John Steinbeck

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. ~ John Steinbeck

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. ~ John Steinbeck

They saw how the wall around Eden stretched away on either hand, with only the one opening, as though to guard those within from hungry hordes who might wish to come inside. And next to the cherubim they saw the flaming sword. … The flaming sword turned this way, to prevent any intruder entering from the east, and that way, to prevent any intruder entering from the west. But it did not ever turn in the direction of the garden. The mouse and the beetle stood together watching it for a long time. Beyond it the country stretched away, with winding rivers and low hills and stands of trees and no moving thing in sight. The beetle said, 'These are formidable defences. No one can enter Eden. But I do not see that there is anything to prevent us leaving. ~ Lucy Hughes-Hallett

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is. ~ John Steinbeck

Some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread. ~ John Steinbeck

We shall remember ...... Damascus, the "Pearl of the East", the pride of Syria, the fabled garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights,the oldest metropolis on Earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten ~ Mark Twain

There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins [wise men or priests in the Vedic tradition] express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world. ~ Erwin Schrodinger

Wake every morning with the same feeling. Live up high and fly on top of the ceiling. I just know that I'm on my way. It doesn't matter to me if I'm chasing the clouds away. North or South, East or West I live my life to the fullest. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

The Arab countries in the Middle East have for decades demonized Israel, to Western leadership, which for reasons not entirely clear, listen to them politely. The Bush Administration, for example, was infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood years before Obama began mainstreaming them and allowing them to have positions of influence within the White House. ~ Manfred Gerstenfeld

I remember when we found the first population of living Cerion agassizi in central Eleuthera. Our hypothesis of Cerion's general pattern required that two predictions be affirmed (or else we were in trouble): this population must disappear by hybridization with mottled shells toward bank-interior coasts and with ribby snails toward the bank-edge. We hiked west toward the bank-interior and easily found hybrids right on the verge of the airport road. We then moved east toward the bank-edge along a disused road with vegetation rising to five feet in the center between the tire paths. We should have found our hybrids but we did not. The Cerion agassizi simply stopped about two hundred yards north of our first ribby Cerion. Then we realized that a pond lay just to our east and that ribby forms, with their coastal preferences, might not favor the western side of the pond. We forded the pond and found a classic hybrid zone between Cerion agassizi and ribby Cerions. (Ribby Cerion had just managed to round the south end of the pond, but had not moved sufficiently north along the west side to establish contact with C. agassizi populations.) I wanted to shout for joy. Then I thought, "But who can I tell; who cares?" And I answered myself, "I don't have to tell anyone. We have just seen and understood something that no one has ever seen and understood before. What more does a man need? ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, can escape that terrible knowledge. Our freedom is not entirely our own; in some sense it is mortgaged from those who paid the ultimate price for its continuance. My own life of security, freedom, opportunity, and relative affluence certainly has been made possible because a grandfather fought and was gassed in the Argonne; an uncle in the Marines died trying to stop Japanese imperialism on Okinawa; a cousin in the Army lost his life at twenty-two trying to stop Hitler in France; and my father in the Army Air Force flew forty times over Japan hoping to end the idea of the expansive Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. I have spent some time these past decades trying to learn where, how, and why they and their generations fought as they did - and what our own obligations are to acknowledge their sacrifices. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

All you have to do is revise your point of view. Instead of trying to achieve perfection, simply relax and enjoy human imperfectability. With that perspective you achieve the ultimate godhead. You see man as infinite possibility always in the process of becoming. You see finally that man, in emulating the creative process, is nothing less than God. ~ Robert H. Rimmer

I hope that none of the countries in the Middle East are planning anything but the peaceful utilization of nuclear energy. ~ Abdallah II Of Jordan

You're following the Lord wholeheartedly, yet you're missing out on the forgiveness part. God's not just in the business of saving us from our sins. He's also in the business of forgiving those sins and putting them as far as the east is from the west. ~ Jody Hedlund

Culture is mix. Culture means a mix of things from other sources. And my town, Istanbul, was this kind of mix. Istanbul, in fact, and my work, is a testimony to the fact that East and West combine cultural gracefully, or sometimes in an anarchic way, came together, and that is what we should search for. ~ Orhan Pamuk

It is remarkable that circumcision, which is invariably practiced by thE
Mahometans, and forms a distinguishing rite of their faith, to which all
proselytes must conform, is neither mentioned in the Koran nor the
Sonna. It seems to have been a general usage in Arabia, tacitly adopted
from the Jews, and is even said to have been prevalent throughout the
East before the time of Moses.

It is said that the Koran forbids the making likenesses of any living
thing, which has prevented the introduction of portrait-painting among
Mahometans. The passage of the Koran, however, which is thought to
contain the prohibition, seems merely an echo of the second commandment, held sacred by Jews and Christians, not to form images or pictures
for worship. One of Mahomet's standards was a black eagle. Among the most distinguished Moslem ornaments of the Alhambra at Granada is a fountain supported by lions carved of stone, and some Moslem monarchs have had their effigies stamped on their coins. ~ Washington Irving

If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her conquests towards the East, and to enter on the inheritance of Alexander the Great there in all its extent, the circumstances were never more favourable for doing so than in the year 716. ~ Theodor Mommsen

I grew up in the East End of London, the youngest of three boys in a Catholic household. Both my parents were market traders and worked seven days a week. ~ James Herbert

This was a particularly spectacular example of the German campaign to gather forced labor in the East, which had begun with the Poles of the General Government, and spread to Ukraine before reaching this bloody climax in Belarus. By the end of the war, some eight million foreigners from the East, most of them Slavs, were working in the Reich. It was a rather perverse result, even by the standards of Nazi racism: German men went abroad and killed millions of "subhumans," only to import millions of other "subhumans" to do the work in Germany that the German men would have been doing themselves - had they not been abroad killing "subhumans." The net effect, setting aside the mass killing abroad, was that Germany became more of a Slavic land than it had ever been in history. (The perversity would reach its extreme in the first months of 1945, when surviving Jews were sent to labor camps in Germany itself. Having killed 5.4 million Jews as racial enemies, the Germans then brought Jewish survivors home to do the work that the killers might have been doing themselves had they not been abroad killing.)

pp. 244-246 ~ Timothy Snyder

Times were very hard if you were a poor, politically correct Jewish girl living in the east end of London during the Blitz and you were trying to eke out a living as a hairdresser. ~ Linda Grant

I've found there to be a tremendous amount of East Coast snobbery in the journalism world. ~ Diane Lane

I chose to start my world tour in Israel for a very specific and important reason. As you know, the Middle East and all the conflicts that occur here and that have been occurring for thousands of years, they have to stop. You can't be a fan of mine and not want peace in the world. ~ Madonna Ciccone