Life & Wisdom Quote by Josephine Hart

Austere and almost prosecutorial, Hart frames morality not as a vibe but as evidence. "Add to the sum" treats goodness like a ledger: measurable, cumulative, and precariously dependent on human action. The second sentence tightens the screw. "To prove the thing exists" implies a world where goodness is in doubt, where cynicism is the default weather and virtue has to be demonstrated like a scientific claim. It is both credo and indictment: if goodness needs proof, then we are living amid enough cruelty, banality, or self-absorption to make decency feel hypothetical.

Hart, a writer best known for the emotionally high-stakes inner weather of Damage, isn’t offering a comforting aphorism. She’s insisting on purpose under conditions of moral ambiguity. The line carries the subtext of someone who has watched desire and ego rationalize almost anything. In that atmosphere, goodness can’t be assumed as a stable human trait; it has to be performed, renewed, made legible in the world. The phrasing also resists grand heroics. "Add" suggests small increments: everyday acts, private restraint, choices no one applauds.

Context matters: Hart’s lifetime spans the postwar period into the age of polished consumer individualism, when "being good" risks sounding naive or punitive. Her answer is neither sanctimony nor despair. It’s a pragmatic defiance: live so that goodness isn’t just a story we tell ourselves, but a reality other people can point to.