Saul Bellow Quotes

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• A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Freedom, Fear

  Saul Bellow (2016). “To Jerusalem and Back”, p.100, Odyssey Editions

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• In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

  Saul Bellow

  Country, California, America

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• You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Mistake, Half

  Saul Bellow (2013). “Seize the Day”, p.70, Odyssey Editions

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• In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)

  Saul Bellow

  Heart, Mean, Thinking

  Saul Bellow (1976). “Herzog”, Viking Adult

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• Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Often Can, People

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• Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

  Saul Bellow

  Memories, Doors, Needs

  SAUL BELLOW (1971). “MR. SAMMLER'S PLANET”

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• A man is only as good as what he loves.

  Saul Bellow

  Love, Inspirational, Funny Valentines Day

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• When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

  Saul Bellow

  Funny, Humor, Advice

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• Towards the end of your life you have something like a pain schedule to fill out - a long schedule like a federal document, only it's your pain schedule. Endless categories. First, physical causes - like arthritis, gallstones, menstrual cramps. New category, injured vanity, betrayal, swindle, injustice. But the hardest items of all have to do with love. The question then is: So why does everybody persist? If love cuts them up so much.

  Saul Bellow

  Pain, Betrayal, Cutting

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• In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

  Saul Bellow

  Crazy, Mad, Age

  1959 Henderson The Rain King, ch.3.

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• Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

  Saul Bellow

  Taken, Keys, People

  Saul Bellow (2010). “Saul Bellow: Letters”, p.422, Penguin

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• Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Motivational, Uprising

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• Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

  Saul Bellow

  Life, Beauty, Unexpected

  Saul Bellow (1976). “Herzog”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

  Saul Bellow

  Wise, Men, Ponds

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• Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.

  Saul Bellow

  Happiness, Book, People

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Ravelstein”, p.140, Penguin

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• Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Boredom, Social

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

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• She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.

  Saul Bellow

  Sweet, Mean, Honey

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

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• Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.

  Saul Bellow

  Dangerous, Strict, Seriousness

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Ravelstein”, p.1, Penguin

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• The life of every citizen is becoming a business. This, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business.

  Saul Bellow

  Men, Citizens, Becoming

  Saul Bellow (1964). “Herzog”

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• ...America didn't have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way ... We weren't starving, we weren't bugged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again.

  Saul Bellow

  Struggle, Sleep, Fighting

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• You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Change, Inspiring

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• A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.

  Saul Bellow

  Men, Giving, Desire

  SAUL BELLOW (1944). “DANGLING MAN”

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• People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

  Saul Bellow

  Book, Reading, People

  Saul Bellow (2016). “Him With His Foot In His Mouth and Other Stories”, p.10, Odyssey Editions

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• If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.

  Saul Bellow

  Children, School, Age

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• Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

  Saul Bellow

  Stupidity, Answers, Readiness

  Saul Bellow (1976). “Herzog”, Viking Adult

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