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Cup of Gold
John Steinbeck
Top 10 Best Quotes
“In all the mad incongruity, the turgid stultiloquy of life, I felt, at least, securely anchored to myself. Whatever the vacillations of other people, I thought myself terrifically constant. But now, here I am, dragging a frayed line, and my anchor gone.”
“Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.”
“...You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man -- if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could -- and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin]”
“You see, I have been at revaluing myself in the last few days. I may have some value to historians because I have destroyed a few things. The builder of your Cathedral is forgotten even now, but I, who burned it, may be remembered for a hundred years or so. And that may mean something or other about mankind.”
“There was no desire in him for a state or condition, no picture in his mind of the thing to be when he had followed his longing; but only a burning and a will overpowering to journey outward and outward after the earliest risen star.”
“He has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be. If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon.”
“It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.”
“Why are you making no more songs?' I said to him in a tone like that. 'Why are you making no more songs?' 'I have grown to be a man. Only children make songs -- children and idiots.”
“The ship started a school of fliers that skipped along the wave tops like shining silver coins. "These are the ghosts of treasures ost at sea," the cook went on, "the murder things, emeralds and diamonds and gold; the sins of men, committed for them, stick to them and make them haunt the ocean. Ah! It's a poor thing if a sailor will not make a grand tale about it." Henry pointed to a great tortoise asleep on the surface. "And what is the tale of the turtles?" He asked. "Nothing; only food...”
“The men of Spain held ground for a little while, but then their hearts broke under their fine red coats, and they ran away to hide in the jungle.”
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Book Keywords:
journey, useful, want-the-moon, self-deception, failed-ambition, longing, yearning, expectation, ambition, practicality, cool-words, human-nature, songs, maturity, coming-of-age, constancy, children-and-idiots, parenthood, fatherhood, manhood, wanderlust, pondering, disillusionment, vacillation, great-men, great-man, knowledge, incongruity, history