A Quote by John Updike

The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.

John Updike

Quote Topics

Afterlife Complex Experience Interval Light Love Opposite Praise Privileged Selfish Witness World Yearning

Quote Author

John Updike
American - Novelist
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

In fact we do not try to picture the afterlife, nor is it our selves in our nervous tics and optical flecks that we wish to perpetuate; it is the self as the window on the world that we can't bear to thinkof shutting. My mind when I was a boy of ten or eleven sent up its silent scream at the thought of future aeons -- at the thought of the cosmic party going on without me. The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise of the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.

John Updike

And if you love the light, then you come to the light to be proved, and tried whether your works be wrought in God. But that which hates the light, turns from the light, and that shall be condemned by the light forever. And though you may turn from the light, where the unity is, and you may turn from the eternal truth; but from the witness of God in your consciences, (which he hath places in you, which beareth witness for the living God,) you can never fly; that shall pursue you wherever you go.

Margaret Fell

We praise Thee, Lord, of all the earth, for love and joy, for light and mirth, for every charm of sense and right, and blessings boundless as Thy might.... But most we praise the love that gave thine own dear Son to seek and save, for joy all other joys excelling, for purest light and life indwelling.

Cecil Frances Alexander

I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.

Anne Lamott

I absolutely love my job. I feel so privileged: I get to travel the world, I get to witness history... and I'm constantly inspired by the different amazing characters I meet along the way.

Clarissa Ward

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.

Sherman Alexie

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

Annie Dillard

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

Ellen Willis

I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife

Kurt Gödel

[People] might have a different word for the yearning of the heart and the yearning of the spirit that is looking for what I call "God," it still is the same thing. It is the heart's yearning to know the origin of its mystery. It's a heart's yearning to know the power of the divine in each of our lives. It's a heart's yearning to be connected to that.

Oprah Winfrey

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.

Ann Patchett

There's a wonderful support network developing worldwide of people who understand what this big calling is, the calling of love. People often ask me, "Is it selfish to want to experience more love? Aren't you just focusing on yourself?" and my answer is that it's the least selfish thing you can do. When you start living more and more in higher states of love, it affects everyone around you and it's the biggest way you can contribute to this planet.

Marci Shimoff

My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there's the reality: there's no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God.

Seamus Heaney

Sure love is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse-- at least, blinded by the light, young love is.

William Carlos Williams

Remember that hate is not the opposite of love as people think. Hate is love standing upside down; it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely. In love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all. Love is when you have known your inner sky. There is no higher religion than love