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Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Quotes

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Famous Saul Bellow Quotes

“It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.”

IfsHardCertainSocialClassRightsPridePropertyPrivilegeDebtConvincedConcreteProperty RightsSocial ClassSpecialty
Book:It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future
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“And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.”

PeopleIfsTryingSaidPossibilityTerrorismViolentPursueDepartmentCivilizedSubmitCowardlyGuerrillasThose You Love
Book:Humboldt's Gift
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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.”

IfsMenTryingStillsMatterDoneEnoughHandsEvilFatherConditionsSonBrotherTerribleAmbitionRaisesBraveBlowStrikesSublimeContinuitySimilarityAlphabetBrave Man
Author:Saul Bellow
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“The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”

IfsNeedsBodyEarthFacesSpiritDarkMy OwnObjectsReflectionMirrorsGlassesAgentsNervesEnginesIngeniousPhysical BodyMemorandum
Book:Humboldt's Gift
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“Towards the end of your life you have something like a pain schedule to fill out - a long schedule like a federal document, only it's your pain schedule. Endless categories. First, physical causes - like arthritis, gallstones, menstrual cramps. New category, injured vanity, betrayal, swindle, injustice. But the hardest items of all have to do with love. The question then is: So why does everybody persist? If love cuts them up so much.”

IfsFirstsLongDoeEndsPainCausesCuttingInjusticeBetrayalEndlessHardestVanityCategoriesPersistDocumentsSchedulesItemsInjuredArthritisCrampsGallstones
Author:Saul Bellow
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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.”

PeopleIfsWantedUsedLanguageTakenKeysFindingsMessagesUnderstoodLongingCodeBeastSolitaryIncapableImpossibilitySuitableLonerComposingImpediments
Book:Saul Bellow: Letters
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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.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldFeelsTryingMayLittlesRealStatesUseRealityNobleMiserableTragicReal WorldSurprisingExceedSomething BetterActualityFabricationOften Can
Author:Saul Bellow
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“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”

IfsArtEndsPhilosophyWould BeAgeScienceArtistHumanityGamesLeftMy OwnBehindsExistencePaintingTypeConvictionMotivatedHumankindWorthlessLeft BehindTurning PointsNurseryArts And Humanities
Author:Saul Bellow
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