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
If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with.
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What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
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Balance is not letting anyone love you less than you love yourself.
Elizabeth GilbertRead
The way to anybody's heart is through a thoughtfully-prepared, beautifully-executed, lovingly-presented meal.
Leo BuscagliaRead
It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of the great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws the atom of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically similar to that which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear to be the primary forces. This is attraction.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead