Saul Bellow Quotes
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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
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But a man's character is his fate... 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.
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I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed.
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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.
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One of the booby traps of freedom - which is bordered on all sides by isolation - is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet.
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We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
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Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.
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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.
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Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
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No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
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I am an American – Chicago born.
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The first undressing of two lovers is a most special event.
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When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.
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It is a joy to be choked with thought.
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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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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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Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
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In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.
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Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. But the over-examined life makes you wish you were dead. Given the alternative, I'd rather be living.
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Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
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The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.
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It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent.
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.