Saul Bellow Quotes
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Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
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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 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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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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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's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.
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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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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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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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No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
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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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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
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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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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.
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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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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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Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
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Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.
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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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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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It is a joy to be choked with thought.
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Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all.
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If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.