To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, con…

John Updike
174 citations
To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.
Death Humanity Thought
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I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone. ✨ John Updike's tstimony given before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House of Representatives Committee on … ▶
I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence … ▶
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.
The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack one too many things. ✨ John Updike (2009). More Matter: Essays and Criticism, p.124, Random House
In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not basically different, perhaps, … ▶

To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.

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