Saul Bellow Quotes

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

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Freedom, Fear

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

  Saul Bellow

  Memories, Doors, Needs

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

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Mistake, Half

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

  Saul Bellow

  Funny, Humor, Advice

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• The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking?

  Saul Bellow

  Asking, Philosopher, Students

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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

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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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• 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

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

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Motivational, Uprising

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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

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• Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.

  Saul Bellow

  Dangerous, Strict, Seriousness

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

  Saul Bellow

  Stupidity, Answers, Readiness

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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

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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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• The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

  Saul Bellow

  Dark, Reflection, Glasses

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

  Saul Bellow

  Book, Reading, People

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• Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés the first prize.

  Saul Bellow

  School, Politics, Firsts

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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

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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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• I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Prayer, Eye

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• A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.

  Saul Bellow

  Choices, Plans, Torment

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• All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

  Saul Bellow

  Accomplishment, Imagination, Enough

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• In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes - and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.

  Saul Bellow

  Emotional, People, Feelings

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