"In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world. We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNovelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesAgnostics from the United StatesPeople from California
Original Language: English
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Sources
Part 4, Ch. 34
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
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John Steinbeck
1902 – 1968
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
214 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Steinbeck →
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