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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.

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
Well
Cuts
Think
Isolation
Thinking
Helped
Life
Cutting
Bordered
Sides
Booby
Freedom
Banquet
Best
Banquets
Wells
Traps

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.
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A man is only as good as what he loves.
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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.
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I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally.
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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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It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.
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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?
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Associate with the noblest people you can find read the best books live with the mighty but learn to be happy alone.
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Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.
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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
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Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was broken.
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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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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.
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... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.
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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too
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Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.
Saul Bellow
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In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
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You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.
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A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
Saul Bellow