John Updike Quotes

There is no new wave, only the sea.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.

This morning's scene is good and fine, Long rain has not harmed the land.

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.

When all the world appears to be in a tumult, and nature itself is feeling the assault of climate change, the seasons retain their essential rhythm. Yes, fall gives us a premonition of winter, but then, winter, will be forced to relent, once again, to the new beginnings of soft greens, longer light, and the sweet air of spring.

Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.

I love better to count time from spring to spring; it seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight.

The sun is new each day.

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.

Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it.

Flexibility is youth.

How lavish is Nature building, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every material particle from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.

Nothing is so beautiful as spring - when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.

The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

Each solstice is a domain of experience unto itself. At the Summer Solstice, all is green and growing, potential coming into being, the miracle of manifestation painted large on the canvas of awareness. At the Winter Solstice, the wind is cold, trees are bare and all lies in stillness beneath blankets of snow.

Nature is infinitely creative. It is always producing the possibility of new beginnings.

These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

Let us ... run the risk of wearing out rather than rusting out.

We will burn the old grass and the new will grow.

I'd like very much to make a confident picture. I would like to be as good as nature, which, with a shower, produces flowers and grass to cover the destruction. But we are surrounded by human fragmentation, by pessimism, and it is difficult to talk of other things.