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
Necessary
Place
Sometimes
Mississippi
Originality
Location
Repeat
Repeats
Avoid

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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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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To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
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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.
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If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.
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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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All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination.
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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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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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.
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What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
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The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions.
Saul Bellow
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There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.
Saul Bellow
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It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.
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Fidelity is for phonographs
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
Saul Bellow
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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
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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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Excuse me ... but I reject your definitions of me.
Saul Bellow
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Conquered people tend to be witty.
Saul Bellow