Quote

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

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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
Force
Frequently
Often
Forces
Seems
Deny
Soul
Indeed
Ideas
Ground
Annul
Find
Seem
Embodied
Sometimes
Hold
Altogether
Trying
Existence
Hostile

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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.
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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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I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
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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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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
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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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Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.
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We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.
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I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.
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When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
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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.
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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.
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Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was broken.
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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
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I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent.
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I must play the instrument I've got.
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