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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

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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
Though
Stability
Enjoy
Offer
Horrifying
Political
Offers
Continental
America
Capacity
Lacked
Europe
Infantile
Intellectual
Sensual
Politics
Pleasures
Pleasure
Offered

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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 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.
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Live or die but don't poison everything.
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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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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The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.
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People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
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I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.
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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 goodbye to reality when love sets in.
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Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
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The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
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There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.
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A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.
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A man may say, From now on I'm going to speak the truth. But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
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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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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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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.
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