Saul Bellow quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Saul Bellow on Wise Famous Quotes.

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.

What do women really want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.

Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul.

Emancipation resulting in madness. Unlimited freedom to choose and play a tremendous variety of roles with a lot of coarse energy.

She was what we used to call a suicide blonde
dyed by her own hand.

I've had all the monstrosity I want.

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.

There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.

You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.

Each man has his own batch of poems.

And the process started over again. Once more it was, Who are you? And I had to confess that I didn't know where to begin.

Every treasure is guarded by dragons. That's how you can tell it's valuable.

What is art but a way of seeing?

The hour that burst the spirit's sleep...

Some men seem to know exactly where their opportunities lie; they break prisons and cross whole Siberias to pursue them. One room holds me.

I want! I want! I want!

It is my childish mind that thinks people are ready to give it just because you need it.

It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.

All at once he was aware that his angry spirit had stolen forth again and he was about to write letters.

Between human beings there are only two alternatives, either brotherhood or crime.

Nobody should be a mystery intentionally. Unintentionally is mysterious enough.

As long as I could keep improving my mind, I figured, I was doing okay.

I have, perhaps, a slave-like constitution which is too easily restrained by bonds; it then becomes rebellious and bursts out in a comic revolution.

In the depths of a man's being there was something that responded with a quack to such perfume. Quack!

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.

It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.

I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want.

He had come into a view of mutability, and I too could see that one is only ostensibly born to remain in specified limits.

In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.

But i am a prisoner of perception, a compulsory witness.

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.

Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was broken.

A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

To rip off a piece of lover's temper was a pleasure in her deepest vein of enjoyment.

It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.

First these people murdered you, then they forced you to brood over their crimes.

The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

There is something funny about the human condition, and civilized intelligence makes fun of its own ideas.

Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn't destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love
or what good is it?

Just because your soul is being torn to pieces doesn't mean that you stop analyzing the phenomena.

But she's a nut, and nuts win.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.

Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

Do we always, always to the point of misery, do a thing?

I am not an ornithologist - I am a bird.

The noise of the world is so terrible that we can endure it only by being coated with sleep.

To him, perpetual thought of death was a sin. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.

The dream of man's heart ... is that life may complete in significant pattern.

Oh yes, I got up on my hindlegs like an orator and sounded off to everyone.

It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.

...and suffering is another bad habit.

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

I quit thinking long ago that all old people came to rest from the things they were out for in their younger years.

What Homo sapien imagines, he may slowly convert himself to.

It hardly does much good to have a complex mind without actually being a philosopher.

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.

A man is only as good as what he loves.

The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.

The lesson of an American life like my father's ... is that achievements are compatible with decency (112).

It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.

She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.

Maybe America didn't need art and inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it, the less we.

At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.

Sometimes I wonder," I said, "if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn't make sure first that they can defend themselves.

As for Thea, sometimes she looked more barbarous than they did in spite of the civilized lipstick and conventional shape of the jodhpurs she wore.

Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.

Herzog abandoned this theme with characteristic abruptness

I would like to explain that I consider prayer above all an act of gratitude for existence.

You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.

I must play the instrument I've got.

There is no old age of the soul.

It's no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think - to say it in your own words, without compromise.

Would never understand what women want. What do they want? They breath salad and drink human blood.

Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters

When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.

A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.

I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.

Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you.

Society is what beats me. Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among people and there's the devil to pay.

Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.

It's wasted on dummies." (Life is). "They give it to dummies and fools.

I discovered, however, in the early days of our marriage that, in having her way, she put my interests ahead of her own.

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.

A good man can bear to listen to another talk about himself.

You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!

Guys like you make life easy for some women.

John Hawkes is an extraordinary writer. I have always admired his books. They should he more widely read.

Let the enemies of life step down.

But there are things you can't consult anybody about.

From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.