Quote

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.

Saul Bellow

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Live
Much
Grip
People
Insightful
Among
Realize
Realizing
Nature
Ideas

More quotes by Saul Bellow

Image
It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.
Saul Bellow
Image
Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
Saul Bellow
Image
I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.
Saul Bellow
Image
A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
The two real problems in life are boredom and death.
Saul Bellow
Image
Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
Saul Bellow
Image
We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
Live or die but don't poison everything.
Saul Bellow
Image
... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow
Image
A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
Saul Bellow
Image
The sand swallows burst out of their scupper holes in the bluffs and out over the transparent drown of the water, back again to the white, to the brown, to the black, from moving to stock-still sand waves and water-worked woods and roots that hugged and twisted in the sun.
Saul Bellow
Image
And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
Saul Bellow
Image
Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.
Saul Bellow
Image
The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions.
Saul Bellow
Image
Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.
Saul Bellow