Quote

It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too.

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
Means
Objects
Beds
Comes
Relationship
Dialogue
Soul
Becomes
Souls
Come
Goes
Object
Sometimes
Turn
Thou
Mean
Wrong
Bed
Thing
Turns
Subject
Men
Spiritual
Subjects

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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There is 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.
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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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Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you.
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With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
Saul Bellow
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The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
Saul Bellow
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How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
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At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.
Saul Bellow
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Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
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Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
Saul Bellow
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O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.
Saul Bellow
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It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.
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?
Saul Bellow
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The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.
Saul Bellow
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Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
Saul Bellow
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When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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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
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We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
Saul Bellow
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(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
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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