Saul Bellow Quotes
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I am an American – Chicago born.
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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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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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Do we always, always to the point of misery, do a thing?
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We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
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A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
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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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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
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Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.
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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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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all.
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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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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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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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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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Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
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With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything.
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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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It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent.
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Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.
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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.