Quote

Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

Saul Bellow

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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Death
Boredom
Power
Instrument
Real
Command
Stasis
Terror
Seasoned
Instruments
Tedium
Deep
Combine
Control
Impose
Social
Anguish

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?
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People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
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How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?
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Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.
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You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
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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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In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.
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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.
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul.
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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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There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.
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Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
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I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed.
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It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.
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It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.
Saul Bellow
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And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
Saul Bellow
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Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.
Saul Bellow
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... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.
Saul Bellow
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I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
Saul Bellow