Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth’s many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more, and float upward in our heedlessness, singing Gratia Dei sum quod sum.
John Updike
John Updike (b. 1932), U.S. author, critic. Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, ch. 6 (1989).
Gratia Dei sum quod sum (“Thanks be to God that I am what I am”)Mone of the epigraphs of Updike’s volume of memoirs—is inscribed on the tomb of Bishop West of Ely in Ely Cathedral, England.