Quote

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

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
People
Busy
Americans
Needed
Religious
History
Felt
Must
Sorely
Always
Guidance

More quotes by Saul Bellow

Image
I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.
Saul Bellow
Image
Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
Saul Bellow
Image
The hour that burst the spirit's sleep.
Saul Bellow
Image
The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Saul Bellow
Image
The ocean was waiting with grand and bitter provocations, as if it invited you to think how deep it was, how much colder than your blood or saltier, or to outguess it, to tell which were its feints or passes and which its real intentions, meaning business.
Saul Bellow
Image
It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.
Saul Bellow
Image
There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.
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
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Saul Bellow
Image
Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was broken.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
Saul Bellow
Image
An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.
Saul Bellow
Image
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
Saul Bellow