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A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

John Updike

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John Updike
Age: 76 †
Born: 1932
Born: March 18
Died: 2009
Died: January 27
Art Critic
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
John Hoyer Updike
Quality
Woe
Literature
Volunteer
Upon
Hence
Take
Foolish
Men
Madness
World
Goodness
People
Leadership
Volunteers
Leader
Erratic

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It is easy to love people in memory the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
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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.
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Do what the heart commands. The heart is our only guide.
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How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.
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Adversity in immunological doses has its uses more than that crushes.
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Art imitates Nature in this not to dare is to dwindle.
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The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.
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All those little congruences and arabesques you prepared with such delicate anticipatory pleasure are gobbled up as if by pigs at a pastry cart.
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irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it.
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Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.
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All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.
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