Dollars had once gathered like autumn leaves on the wooden collection plates; dollars were the flourishing sign of God's specifically American favor, made manifest in the uncountable millions of Carnegie and Mellon and Henry Ford and Catholina Lambert. But amid this fabled plenty the whiff of damnation had cleared of dollars and cents the parched ground around Clarence Wilmot. John Updike
About This Quote

Money can be a great source of comfort. It can also be the root of all evil. In the story "Mining for Gold" by John Steinbeck, Clarence Wilmot is trying to live honestly in America. He is doing everything right, but he cannot seem to find enough money to feed his family.

As he looks at all of the money his sons have accumulated, he thinks about all of the things they could have done with that money. He tries to think about how he would have lived differently if he had not lost everything due to poor management of his business. He realizes that the power of money has made him lose sight of what’s really important in life.

Source: In The Beauty Of The Lilies

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  1. It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
  2. Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
  3. If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
  4. The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
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