“No act is so private it does not seek applause.”
More from John Updike on Philosophy
“Growth is betrayal.”
“Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.”
“From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.”
“Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.”
Others on Philosophy
Nietzsche
22 quotes“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“Nothing endures but change.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds...”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Circumstances-what are circumstances? I make circumstances.”
T. S. Eliot
13 quotes“We have only to conquer Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.Now is the triumph of the cross.”