Saul Bellow Quotes - Page 5

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• Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels.

  Saul Bellow

  Men, Smoking, Hats

  Saul Bellow (2013). “Seize the Day”, p.6, Odyssey Editions

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Selfish, Heart, People

  Saul Bellow (2001). “Collected stories”, Penguin Group USA

  36 Copy quote

• Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Disappointment, Philosophy

  Saul Bellow (2015). “There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction”, p.216, Penguin

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• Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Often Can, People

  8 Copy quote

• Let the enemies of life step down.

  Saul Bellow

  Life, Enemy, Steps

  Saul Bellow (1976). “Herzog”, Viking Adult

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• We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.

  Saul Bellow

  America, Helping, Evolution

  Saul Bellow (2016). “It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future”, p.280, Odyssey Editions

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• Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Order, Chaos

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• A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.

  Saul Bellow

  Sick, Soul, Desire

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Ravelstein”, p.13, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.

  Saul Bellow

  Mankind, Betterment, Fairs

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• Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

  Saul Bellow

  Taken, Keys, People

  Saul Bellow (2010). “Saul Bellow: Letters”, p.422, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• Well, everybody has a history.

  Saul Bellow

  History, Wells

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Mr. Sammler's Planet”, p.99, Odyssey Editions

  4 Copy quote

• I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.

  Saul Bellow

  Price Tag, Two Sides, Figs

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

  17 Copy quote

• Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.

  Saul Bellow

  Crazy, Mental Illness, Evidence

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Mr. Sammler's Planet”, p.61, Odyssey Editions

  4 Copy quote

• An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.

  Saul Bellow

  Love, Men, Soul

  4 Copy quote

• (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.

  Saul Bellow

  Two, Soul, Would Be

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

  8 Copy quote

• There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.

  Saul Bellow

  War, Evil, Goes On

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

  71 Copy quote

• Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

  Saul Bellow

  Grateful, Artist, Grace

  Foreword to "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom, 1987.

  8 Copy quote

• The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.

  Saul Bellow

  Character, Rewriting, Reason

  Saul Bellow, Gloria L. Cronin, Ben Siegel (1994). “Conversations with Saul Bellow”, p.45, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  13 Copy quote

• For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.

  Saul Bellow

  Gone, May, Firsts

  Saul Bellow (2016). “To Jerusalem and Back”, p.33, Odyssey Editions

  7 Copy quote

• There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover.

  Saul Bellow

  Husband, Years, Exotic

  1969 Mr Sammler's Planet, ch.6.

  7 Copy quote

• California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.

  Saul Bellow

  Country, California, Needs

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• Here we write well when we expose frauds and hypocrites. We are great at counting warts and blemishes and weighting feet of clay. In expressing love, we belong among the underdeveloped countries.

  Saul Bellow

  Country, Writing, Hypocrite

  5 Copy quote

• A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?

  Saul Bellow

  Writing, Heart, Long

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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.

  Saul Bellow

  Underestimate, Democratic, Impulse

  Saul Bellow (1976). “Herzog”, Viking Adult

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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.

  Saul Bellow

  Brother, Father, Ambition

  15 Copy quote

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