Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
I think there must have been some other girl printed somewhere in his heart, for he was a man of love and his wife was not a woman to show her feelings.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that a man who can love deeply may harbor feelings for someone else due to a lack of emotional expression from his partner.
In this quote, John Steinbeck reflects on the complexities of love and emotional expression in relationships. It highlights how one partner's inability to openly show affection may lead the other to seek or believe in the existence of unexpressed love elsewhere, suggesting that genuine feelings can be misinterpreted or neglected if not reciprocated or communicated effectively.
Themes
LoveFeelingsRelationshipsCommunicationEmotional Expression
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of expressing feelings in relationships.
More from John Steinbeck
All quotes →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.
John SteinbeckRead
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.
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The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
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People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
John SteinbeckRead
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
John SteinbeckRead
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