Quote

It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.

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
Location
Repeat
Repeats
Avoid
Necessary
Place
Sometimes
Mississippi
Originality

More quotes by 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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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.
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I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
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How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?
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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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In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
Saul Bellow
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It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.
Saul Bellow
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Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage it is harder to find out how he feels.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.
Saul Bellow
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The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
Saul Bellow
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People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow
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I have, perhaps, a slave-like constitution which is too easily restrained by bonds it then becomes rebellious and bursts out in a comic revolution.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.
Saul Bellow
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I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog.
Saul Bellow
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It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.
Saul Bellow
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I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.
Saul Bellow
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A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow
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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
Saul Bellow