Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
Anything that just costs money is cheap.
Interpretation
True value goes beyond monetary cost; it encompasses deeper significance and meaning.
John Steinbeck's quote suggests that anything that can merely be purchased with money lacks true worth or depth. This idea highlights the distinction between material items and the more valuable experiences or qualities in life that cannot be bought, inviting reflection on what we truly cherish and value.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about minimalism and the importance of experiences over possessions.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details-the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom-also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist.
He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor.
Words were useless. At times, they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for them? The heart is as silent as a fish, however much the tongue tries to give it a voice.
(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness).Familiarity can blind you too.
Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
Is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger, to jealousies and a hundred other petty things that must occur every day in human life?
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