# Quote — John Steinbeck, East of Eden

> 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.

- Author: [John Steinbeck](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck.md)
- Book: [East of Eden](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#East_of_Eden_(1952)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden/in-uncertainty-i-am-certain

## More from this book

> You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns.

p. 216 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden/you-might-get.md)

> I have wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.

p. 290 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden/i-have-wondered.md)

> He told me how a man, a real man, had no right to let sorrow destroy him. He told me again and again how I must believe that time would take care of it. He said it so often that I knew he was losing.

p. 283 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/east-of-eden/he-told-me-how.md)