Saul Bellow Quotes - Page 5

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• We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.

  Saul Bellow

  America, Helping, Evolution

  Saul Bellow (2016). “It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future”, p.280, Odyssey Editions

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• Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Order, Chaos

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• A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.

  Saul Bellow

  Sick, Soul, Desire

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Ravelstein”, p.13, Penguin

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• Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.

  Saul Bellow

  Mankind, Betterment, Fairs

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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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• Well, everybody has a history.

  Saul Bellow

  History, Wells

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Mr. Sammler's Planet”, p.99, Odyssey Editions

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• There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

  Saul Bellow

  Book, Writing, Sunset

  Saul Bellow (2010). “Saul Bellow: Letters”, p.167, Penguin

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• Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.

  Saul Bellow

  Crazy, Mental Illness, Evidence

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Mr. Sammler's Planet”, p.61, Odyssey Editions

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• I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.

  Saul Bellow

  Price Tag, Two Sides, Figs

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.

  Saul Bellow

  Love, Men, Soul

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• Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

  Saul Bellow

  Grateful, Artist, Grace

  Foreword to "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom, 1987.

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• (Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.

  Saul Bellow

  Two, Soul, Would Be

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

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• There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.

  Saul Bellow

  War, Evil, Goes On

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.

  Saul Bellow

  Gone, May, Firsts

  Saul Bellow (2016). “To Jerusalem and Back”, p.33, Odyssey Editions

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• The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.

  Saul Bellow

  Character, Rewriting, Reason

  Saul Bellow, Gloria L. Cronin, Ben Siegel (1994). “Conversations with Saul Bellow”, p.45, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• What Homo sapien imagines, he may slowly convert himself to.

  Saul Bellow

  Imagination, May, Imagine

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• There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover.

  Saul Bellow

  Husband, Years, Exotic

  1969 Mr Sammler's Planet, ch.6.

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• Here we write well when we expose frauds and hypocrites. We are great at counting warts and blemishes and weighting feet of clay. In expressing love, we belong among the underdeveloped countries.

  Saul Bellow

  Country, Writing, Hypocrite

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• California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.

  Saul Bellow

  Country, California, Needs

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse.

  Saul Bellow

  Underestimate, Democratic, Impulse

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

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• A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?

  Saul Bellow

  Writing, Heart, Long

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• Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.

  Saul Bellow

  Brother, Father, Ambition

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• You have one of two choices. Either you can panic and start making frantic attempts to reform under the glare of these awful critical eyes, or you can just say, "The hell with you! I know what I'm doing. If you don't yet, it's because you haven't given me an attentive reading.

  Saul Bellow

  Reading, Eye, Two

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• Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.

  Saul Bellow

  Definitions, Conscious, Analysts

  Saul Bellow (2016). “The Dean's December”, p.245, Odyssey Editions

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• I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

  Saul Bellow

  Character, Fate, Men

  1953 The Adventures of Augie March.

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