John Steinbeck Quotes

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

Action often precedes the feeling.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.

Action is the right outlet of emotion.

Feelings are much stronger than thoughts. We are all led by instinct, and our intellect catches up later

Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.

That is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel.

Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear.

It is feeling that sets a man thinking, and not thought that sets him feeling.

Emotions aren't doable. Actions are doable, and if you do them correctly, they prompt the feelings.

Thought is the seed of action.

Passion, like discriminating taste, grows on its use. You more likely act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.

The heart, not the head, must be the guide.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.

For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied - whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of.

I don't know why I run so fast. I just run.

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

Logic is no answer to passion.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

People and nations act on the basis of what they feel rather than what is real.

Ideas lead to actions.