-
You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.
Saul Bellow -
The dream of man's heart ... is that life may complete in significant pattern.
Saul Bellow
-
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.
Saul Bellow -
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Saul Bellow -
No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
Saul Bellow -
He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted--must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible.
Saul Bellow -
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.
Saul Bellow -
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
-
I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.
Saul Bellow -
The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
Saul Bellow -
A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
Saul Bellow -
Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
Saul Bellow -
And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
Saul Bellow -
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.
Saul Bellow
-
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.
Saul Bellow -
I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.
Saul Bellow -
The hour that burst the spirit's sleep.
Saul Bellow -
I don't know exactly how it's done. I let it alone a good deal.
Saul Bellow -
A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.
Saul Bellow -
In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too
Saul Bellow
-
Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.
Saul Bellow -
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.
Saul Bellow -
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.
Saul Bellow -
I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.
Saul Bellow