If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the struggle against minimizing extraordinary experiences to fit our limited understanding.
John Updike emphasizes the human tendency to confront monumental events with the fear of trivializing them. The quote suggests that in the face of greatness or horror, we strive to resist the urge to simplify or diminish our experience, recognizing the vastness of what we witness and the importance of embracing it fully rather than filtering it through our small perspectives.
Themes
GreatnessHorrorPerceptionFightSmallness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about how we process trauma and significant events in our lives.
More from John Updike
All quotes βDost 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
Contemporary industrial society is now characterised more than ever by "the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity."
Herbert MarcuseRead
Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
The problem of racial difference in America - and in modern life more broadly - is always presented as an economic, political, biological or cultural problem. But I want to say that it's at least as much a philosophical and imaginative disaster.
Thomas Chatterton WilliamsRead
A box is more a coffin for the human spirit than an inspiration.
Frank Lloyd WrightRead
Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand opposed to natural institutions.
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
If a poor family falls on hard times in the woods, and no one is around to care, did it really happen?
Stephen ColbertRead