If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up , out of the dreadfulness of merely living.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love is essential to our existence, shaping our very being and providing meaning beyond mere survival.
In this quote, John Updike expresses the profound impact of love on human existence, suggesting that love is what truly defines us. Without love, he argues, we are reduced to mere animals, experiencing only the cycle of life and fear. Love elevates us from the mundane and gives purpose to our lives, making it an intrinsic part of our humanity.
Themes
LoveExistenceHumanityPurposeFear
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech, one might say, 'As John Updike eloquently stated, we are fated to love one another, and it's this love that brings us together today.'
More from John Updike
All quotes →Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
You have opened up the prison gates of my womanhood. And all the passion that was unsatisfied in for me so many years, leaped into a wild reckless storm boundless as the sea.
Emma GoldmanRead
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
Ambrose BierceRead
Darkness cannot cast out darkness. You need a light for that. Fear cannot cast out fear. You're gonna need hope for that death warrants more death. But I believe life wants more life and I'm convinced that the greatest weapon we've got is LOVE! And maybe, in a world full of fighters, in a world imploding with hate, maybe to be a lover, you gotta be a fighter. Maybe that's the biggest fight, the only fight worth fighting, the fight you're gonna be in for the rest of your life.
Jon ForemanRead
Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
Margaret AtwoodRead
Here we stop. Upon the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling, his finger on his lip.
Victor HugoRead
There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead