East Of Eden Quotes

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

A writer of stories is a liar. ~ John Steinbeck

sometimes, as you ought to remember, you want some conversation, some meat along with the sizzle. Bonnie had the sizzle, but I knew it wasn't going to be enough, even for the summer, when she picked up a copy of East of Eden I had on the nightstand and said she didn't know I was religious." "Religious?" "She figured Eden - so it must be a biblical story. She didn't even know who Steinbeck was." And he could still shake his head over that. "Even an overbite can't make up for that. ~ Nora Roberts

'East of Eden' is an important story for me. It's about a kid that's misunderstood and feels like he's not loved by his father. It's a very father-son kind of story, and it's not until the end that they sort of make up. I like that because every boy has trouble with his father, so it's very relatable. ~ Ansel Elgort

They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish) ~ John Steinbeck

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. ~ 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

and what is truth?" "East of Eden ~ John Steinbeck

It is easy, out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! ~ 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

Maybe
maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure
never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? ~ 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

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

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

A man is a very important thing-maybe more important than a star. ~ 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

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

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

At the end of history the whole earth has become the Garden of God again. Death and decay and suffering are gone ... Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living 'east of Eden,' always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be brought into the feast. ~ Timothy Keller

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

I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. ~ John Steinbeck

I eat stories like grapes. ~ John Steinbeck

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them. ~ John Steinbeck

The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. ~ 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

There's a capacity for appetite ... that a whole heaven and earth of cake can't satisfy ~ John Steinbeck

People like you to be something, preferably what they are. ~ John Steinbeck

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. ~ Satoshi Kanazawa

Romney Marsh remains one of the last great wildernesses of south-east England. Flat as a desert, and at times just as daunting, it is an odd, occasionally eerie wetland straddling the coastal borders of Kent and Sussex, rich in birds, local folklore and solitary medieval churches. ~ David Hewson

And you can put your total energy for the inner eye. The outside eyes are wasting eighty percent of energy - it is the major part. Man has five senses, eighty per cent is taken away by the eyes and only twenty per cent is left for the other four senses. They are very poor people, those four. Eyes are very rich, they have monopolised the whole thing; hence it is good - eighty per cent energy is saved - and that can be immediately used for witnessing, for seeing your inner world. hence in the East we call a person who is blind 'pragyanshakshu' - this word is untranslatable. ~ Rajneesh

The teachers of the East say that every arrow that hits the bull's eye is the result of one hundred misses. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Solving the problems of the Middle East and the threat they pose to the world requires a fundamental change in the region's economic profile.9 The international community would have to make a sizable investment - a Marshall Plan in scale - to bring about change of that magnitude. And that requires American leadership. Even if we cannot afford that right now, we still need a clear economic strategy for the region - a plan for using development aid, trade, and investment to help the region and also serve our interests. ~ Vali Nasr

On the news two dozen events of fantastically different importance are announced in exactly the same tone of voice. The voice doesn't discriminate between a divorce, a horse race, a war in the Middle East. ~ Doris Lessing

In places like Germany or France the idea of black-white is not so much black-white but "our people and them," and "them" can be people from the near east like Turks or Muslims or North Africans, all of whom might well be considered white in the United States. ~ Nell Irvin Painter

He folded his hands behind his back and puffed out his chest. Reminded Lucky of a barnyard rooster. Anybody who referred to Lucky as a cocky little bantam found out pretty soon that Lucky could back up his strut, and this guy was probably the roostah who used ta, or he wouldn't be teaching. ~ Eden Winters

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

There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should come, in whose hand she would lay her own, and they two would flee to the far East. But as the changeless years went by and brought him not, the girl grew sullen, and a sense of wrong possessed her, for the older she grew, the clearer became her consciousness of a world beyond her, and the greater her longing to seek it.
("The Serpent's Head") ~ Emilia Francis Strong Dilke

King Edmund of East Anglia is now remembered as a saint, as one of those blessed souls who live forever in the shadow of God. Or so the priests tell me. In heaven, they say, the saints occupy a privileged place, living on the high platform of God's great hall where they spend their time singing God's praises. Forever. Just singing. Beocca always told me that it would be an ecstatic existence, but to me it seems very dull. The Danes reckon their dead warriors are carried to Valhalla, the corpse hall of Odin, where they spend their days fighting and their nights feasting and swiving, and I dare not tell the priests that this seems a far better way to endure the afterlife than singing to the sound of golden harps. I once asked a bishop whether there were any women in heaven. "Of course there are, my lord," he answered, happy that I was taking an interest in doctrine. "Many of the most blessed saints are women."

"I mean women we can hump, bishop."

He said he would pray for me. Perhaps he did. ~ Bernard Cornwell

The civilized East is immeasurably in advance of any savage tribes; the Greeks and Romans have improved upon the East; the Christian nations have been stricter in their views of the marriage relation than any of the ancients. ~ Plato

I'm lucky to live in New York, a city that offers so many options for lunch. I can pick up dumplings from a Midtown food truck, grab empanadas by the dozen in Spanish Harlem or get a fantastic bowl of ramen in the East Village. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

I like to imagine that Adam's tongue, his palate and his lips were always on fire, that the air he breathed was kindled to incandescence each time he cried out in sorrow or delight. If fiction can be said to have a function, it is to release that primary fury of which language, even now, is miraculously capable - from the dry mud of daily use. So that furred, spotted and striped, it may - as it did in Eden - scrawl under every tree as revelation. ~ Rikki Ducornet

The Muslim East has been in a defensive posture for centuries. Take Turkey. For a period of close to two hundred years, we've been living through phases of vital self-defense and security. In such a society, a fortress mentality naturally arises. If today we've lost the concept of freedom, the reason is that we're living in a state of siege." Suad ~ Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Women have been deceiving men since the Garden of Eden. They've had centuries of practice. ~ Michael Schmicker

They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator. ~ David Attenborough

My feet shuffle toward the door, walking backward. "I'll, uh, text you. I'm catching up with the guys next weekend."

Maddox puts his hands in his pockets. "Yeah … uh, sounds good."

I mentally check off a list of all my friends who would be into Maddox. And then I make a note not to invite them next weekend. Because even though I can't be his experiment, I don't want them to go for him either.

Asshole level achieved: expert. ~ Eden Finley

I went to my room and packed a change of clothes, got my banjo, and started walking down the road. Soon I found myself on the open highway headed east. ~ Burl Ives

Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon ... ~ Margaret Atwood

I've seen your dad on TV. I don't know how to say this without offending you, so I'm just going to say he looks like the type of politician who spouts family values and then gets caught in a seedy motel with a prostitute."
I laugh. "SO glad you tried not to offend me, Jet. ~ Eden Finley

We are, after all, citizens of the world - a world filled with bacteria, some friendly, some not so friendly. Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald's? ~ Anthony Bourdain

During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religiuos, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue. ~ Philip Khuri Hitti

We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain. ~ Mako

If there's another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country. ~ Daniel Ellsberg

All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Moslem; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are "the Jews of Spain". On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is the Armenians. Lawrence Durrell says that when he lived in Crete he was friends with the Greeks, but that when he wanted to buy some land they sent him to a Turk, saying that a Turk was what you needed for a trade, though of course he couldn't be trusted.
This figure who is good with money but a little tricky is always treated as a foreigner even if his family has been around for centuries. Often he actually is a foreigner, of course. He is invited in when the nation needs trade and he is driven out - or murdered - when nationalism begins to flourish: the Chinese out of Vietnam in 1978, the Japanese out of China in 1949, the Jankees out of South America and Iran, the East Indians out of Uganda under Idi Amin, and the Armenians out of Turkey in 1915-16. The outsider is always used as a catalyst to arouse nationalism, and when times are hard he will always be its victim as well. ~ Lewis Hyde

Therefore, the question is not whether such democratization is possible, but instead how to meet the yearning of the masses in the Middle East for democracy; in other words, how to achieve democratization in the Middle East. ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan

For decades, the violence in the Middle East has claimed a multitude of innocent civilian victims: Men, women and children, Arab and Israeli. ~ John Conyers

Five months after Zoran's disappearance, his wife gave birth to a girl. The mother was unable to nurse the child. The city was being shelled continuously. There were severe food shortages. Infants, like the infirm and the elderly, were dying in droves. The family gave the baby tea for five days, but she began to fade.

"She was dying," Rosa Sorak said. "It was breaking our hearts."

Fejzic, meanwhile, was keeping his cow in a field on the eastern edge of Goražde, milking it at night to avoid being hit by Serbian snipers.

"On the fifth day, just before dawn, we heard someone at the door," said Rosa Sorak. "It was Fadil Fejzic in his black rubber boots. He handed up half a liter of milk he came the next morning, and the morning after that, and after that. Other families on the street began to insult him. They told him to give his milk to Muslims, to let the Chetnik children die. He never said a word. He refused our money. He came 442 days, until my daughter-in-law and granddaughter left Goražde for Serbia."

The Soraks eventually left and took over a house that once belonged to a Muslim family in the Serbian-held town of Kopaci. Two miles to the east. They could no longer communicate with Fejzic.

The couple said they grieved daily for their sons. They missed their home. They said they could never forgive those who took Zoran from them. But they also said that despite their anger and loss, they could not listen to other Sebs t ~ Chris Hedges

The United States lost the nuclear-powered submarine Thresher 100 miles east of Cape Cod in 1963, and the submarine Scorpion sank in 1968 in more than 10,000 feet of water 400 miles southwest of the Azores. ~ Andrew Rosenthal

The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through. ~ Adrienne Rich

Repeatedly and frankly we have announced that in Irans national security doctrine there is no room for atomic and chemical weapons as we consider them against Islamic laws. Irans Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei) in this connection had issued a decree that mass destruction weapons are prohibited by the Muslim religion. [ ... ] Therefore we support the idea of a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction[.] ~ Ali Larijani

I accept responsibility for U-boat warfare from 1933 onward, and of the entire navy from 1943 on, but to make me responsible for what happened to Jews in Germany, or Russian soldiers on the east front it is so ridiculous all I can do is laugh. ~ Karl Donitz

Some lives are thus blessed: it is God's will: it is the attesting trace and lingering evidence of Eden. Other lives run from the first another course. Other travelers encounter weather fitful and gusty , wild and variable - breast adverse winds, are belated and overtaken by the early closing winter night. Neither can this happen without the sanction of God; and I know that amidst His boundless works, is somewhere stored the secret of this last fate's justice: I know that His treasures contain the proof as the promise of its mercy. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Mongkol, poor Mongkol, shedding tears.

Thinking of his smiling, comical face, and his dreams of sending his son to university, I could only lower my head in silence.

And the night continued, cold and dark, the wind frozen beyond the mountains. ~ You Jin

Hillary Clinton, as an awful judge of the character of a dictator and butcher in the Middle East. Is she guilty or not guilty? ~ Chris Christie

But it is these four heroes, whom I will discuss from time to time in this book, whose poems, novels, stories, articles, memoirs, and encyclopedias opened my eyes to the soul of the city in which I live. For these four melancholic writers drew their strength from the tensions between the past and the present, or between what Westerners like to call East and West; they are the ones who taught me how to reconcile my love for modern art and western literature with the culture of the city in which I live. ~ Orhan Pamuk

After university, I taught secondary school for a while and opened a bookshop in Greenwich, just east of London. ~ Nigel Hamilton

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you'll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you're on the plane, if you're westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you're on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new "dark" time. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day's blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered - pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, "Let there be light!" You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur. ~ Paul Kalanithi

The sun rolls along up Fourteenth Street and the ghost of a habit turns Cat's face into the light. She shields her eyes and looks east, half expecting to see her father, a sun-blown shadow in the diorama box of his newsstand. ~ Cari Luna

Maniac kept trying, but he still couldn't see it, this color business. He didn't figure he was white any more than the East Enders were black. He looked himself over pretty hard and came up with at least seven different shades and colors right on his own skin, not one of them being what he would call white (except for his eyeballs, which weren't any whiter than the eyeballs of the kids in the East End). ~ Jerry Spinelli

From the depths of the West of Europe, a young child will be born of poor people, he who by his tongue will seduce a great troop; his fame will increase towards the realm of the East. ~ Nostradamus

I'm on it"
"Really?"
"I'd love to say I'm doing this because I'm your friend, but honestly? The tought of you having to pretend to be gay for forty-eight hours entertains me immensely. ~ Eden Finley

Livestock adopted in Africa were Eurasian species that came in from the north. Africa's long axis, like that of the Americas, is north/south rather than east/west. Those Eurasian domestic mammals spread southward very slowly in Africa, because they had to adapt to different climate zones and different animal diseases. ~ Jared Diamond

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott