The Updike was what I had in mind, I am sure, but the following are also
good. Thanks to many readers.
(1) “The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death –
that is not the great thing – but that we are to be new here and now by the
power of the Resurrection; not so much that we are to live forever, as that
we are to, and may, live nobly now because we are to live
forever.”—Phillips Brooks
(2) From ‘The Lion in Winter’ quotes :
(Prince Geoffrey) — You fool. As if it matters how a man falls. (Prince
Richard) — When the fall is all that’s left, it matters.
(3) “Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is
within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to
live long.”—Seneca
(4) “It is preoccupations with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly.”—Bertrand Russell
(5) A reader: “Not quite as muscular as the Roman concept, but perhaps more
realistic, is the spirit of the girl in Flannery O’Conner’s story ‘Temple of
the Holy Ghost,’ who was resolved that though ’she could never be a saint,’
she ‘thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.’”