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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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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Would
Immortal
Possibility
Either
Born
Death
Socrates
Two
Blank
Soul
Immortality
Things
Possibilities

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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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Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
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I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
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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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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.
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You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
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You have one of two choices. Either you can panic and start making frantic attempts to reform under the glare of these awful critical eyes, or you can just say, The hell with you! I know what I'm doing. If you don't yet, it's because you haven't given me an attentive reading.
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In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good.
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Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
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Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
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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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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.
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Live or die but don't poison everything.
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O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.
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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.
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The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
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All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination.
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The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.
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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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My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?
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