Someone has already answered what the protagonist Marlowe said in Raymond Chandler's "Replay".

But I personally think that this should be translated as "If I weren't tough, I wouldn't be alive. If I wasn't romantic, I wouldn't deserve to be alive." Readers who are familiar with Marlowe should not think that he is such a bad person. People with bad tempers and bad mouths are associated with the word "gentle". But he was romantic enough, saying in "The Long Goodbye" "I'm a romantic by nature, Bernie. If I hear crying in the middle of the night, I'll go out and have a look. You don't earn a cent for that kind of thing." To sum up, I think romance is more appropriate here.

That’s it.