Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
Interpretation
Change is subtle and often unnoticed, but it is a natural part of life.
In this quote, John Steinbeck reflects on the nature of change, suggesting that it often arrives softly and almost imperceptibly, much like a gentle breeze or the faint scent of flowers. This illustrates that change can be both a gradual process and a beautiful aspect of life, highlighting its quiet yet impactful presence in our daily experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about embracing change in personal development.
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.
I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.
So go ahead, break stuff. Break yourself on the once-hard edges of yourself. And recycle the debris into the foundation of your future.
No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.
We believe we can change things according to our wishes because that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution; things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
I’d like to see Manhattan underwater. I’d like to see when the human population plummets and there are no more high rises, because nobody’s buying them. I’m excited about that. Money and desire—all that is going to collapse, and wild green grasses are going to take over.
We do not have a fear of the unknown. What we fear is giving up the known.
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