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To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.

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
Strength
Joy
Tell
Truth
Character
Good
Lacked
Never
Bear
Bears

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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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
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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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A man is only as good as what he loves.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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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.
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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It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.
Saul Bellow
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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
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There is simply too much to think about.
Saul Bellow
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A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
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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I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul.
Saul Bellow
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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul Bellow
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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.
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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I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
Saul Bellow
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In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?
Saul Bellow
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
Saul Bellow
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How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
Saul Bellow
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Live or die but don't poison everything.
Saul Bellow