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
Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.
Louis De BernieresRead
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
Ben JonsonRead
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
E. M. ForsterRead
Love always elevates the character of man. It never lowers him, provided love be love
Bhagat SinghRead
There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.
John Gregory BrownRead
A real girl isn't perfect and a perfect girl isn't real.
Harry StylesRead