Quotes from John Steinbeck, East of Eden

...without money you cannot fight money.

Money's easy to make if it's money you want. But with few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..

...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.

My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.

Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too.

Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.

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 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.

Well, a man's mind can't stay in time the way his body does.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.

There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.

Will liked to live so that no one could find fault with him, and to do that he had to live as nearly like other people as possible.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layer of frailty men want to be good and want be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.

A man without words is a man without thought.

And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness.

The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.

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.

Caleb and Aaron—now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.