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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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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Foot
Soldier
Humility
Private
Feet
Socrates
Disgrace
Plain

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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One of the booby traps of freedom - which is bordered on all sides by isolation - is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet.
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I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent.
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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.
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A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
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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 best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance and this fantasy (?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment.
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With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything.
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I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
Saul Bellow
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You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
Saul Bellow
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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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I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.
Saul Bellow
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Live or die but don't poison everything.
Saul Bellow
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It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.
Saul Bellow
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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.
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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How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
Saul Bellow
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If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow