Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the notion of perception and awareness in human interactions.
In this quote, John Steinbeck expresses a profound truth about the human experience: that we often pass through life without truly seeing the people around us. It highlights our tendency to be blind to the depth and complexity of those we encounter daily, urging us to cultivate deeper awareness and connection in our relationships.
In practice
In a speech about mindfulness, one might say, 'As John Steinbeck once remarked, I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen, encouraging us to truly engage with those around us.'
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.
Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.
There is a much more exact correspondence between the natural and moral world than we are apt to take notice of.
There is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced.
No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those who neglect their neighbour a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all.
There are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name. These solitudes of today return us to the original solitudes.
In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.
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