Quote

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.

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
Humans
Time
Purest
Life
Sacred
Beings
Beginning
Understood
Best
Human

More quotes by Saul Bellow

Image
We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.
Saul Bellow
Image
Associate with the noblest people you can find read the best books live with the mighty but learn to be happy alone.
Saul Bellow
Image
At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.
Saul Bellow
Image
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
Saul Bellow
Image
... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.
Saul Bellow
Image
I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
I am moneys medium. It passes through me- taxes, insurance, mortgage, child support, rent, legal fees. All this dignified blundering costs plenty.
Saul Bellow
Image
And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.
Saul Bellow
Image
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
Saul Bellow
Image
The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
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
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
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
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
Image
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.
Saul Bellow
Image
It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.
Saul Bellow