John Updike Quotes

Without the existence of the opposite, the concept has no meaning.

You cannot dissociate birth from death, creation from destruction, good from evil. Thus any art is a form of drama standing between the two extreme poles of birth and death, just like life is drama. This is not sad, because to be alive means to be mortal, to pass through.

Dusk is just an illusion because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are there cannot be one without the other yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel I remember wondering to be always together yet forever apart?

Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.

The planet is always half light and half dark, and so are we.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

Shadow owes its birth to light.

It is impious to say that evil has its origin from God, because naught contrary is produced by the contrary. Life does not generate death, nor is darkness the beginning of light, nor is disease the maker of health, but in the changes of conditions there are transitions from one condition to the contrary.

He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

You'll have to forgive me this boldness, but I think women are very fortunate that men exist! The gods are very wise and certainly knew what they were doing. They created the sun and the moon, light and darkness, the eagle and the serpent, all for the same reason. They are perfect complements and the mechanism we use to reach heaven.

All of the universe will be divided into two parts.

In Taoist philosophy, 'yin' is the feminine principle, representing the forces of earth, while 'yang' is the masculine principle, representing spirit.

I'm a religious, spiritual person, but if there is good in the world, there must be evil, too.

Life really is a series of contrasts.

Nothing is the shadow of Everything.

It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South--so much in balance, in agreement--and yet... the whole world lies between.

I sense Light as the giver of all presences, and material as spent Light. What is made by Light casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.

You can't have something without nothing.

This principle of opposites is at the very root of Creation, which is divided between the rule of the King and the Queen; Night and Day; the One and the Varied; the Eternal and the Evolving.

The coexistence of opposites - stillness and dynamism - makes you independent... When you quietly acknowledge this exquisite coexistence of opposites, you align yourself with the world of energy - the quantum soup, the non-material non-stuff that is the source of the material world. This world energy is fluid, dynamic, resilient, changing, forever in motion. And yet it is also non-changing, still, quiet, eternal and silent.

Creation and destruction are the two ends of the same moment. And everything between the creation and the next destruction is the journey of life.