Saul Bellow Quotes
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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)
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It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too.
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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.
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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.
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I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally.
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There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.
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It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent.
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I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.
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Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
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Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.
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Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
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Great pressure is brought to bear to make us undervalue ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches that each of us is an inestimable prize. There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death. Therefore we value and are ashamed to value ourselves.
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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.
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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.
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
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Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.
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Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
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What Homo sapien imagines, he may slowly convert himself to.
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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.
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There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
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We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
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I am something of a crank about sleep, for if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there's nothing really wrong with me. It's just another idea. That's how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken.