Quote

Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.

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
Illusion
Shortcut
Courses
Bankrupt
Success
Shortcuts
Death
Cemetery
Much
Retirement
Like
Reward
Rewards
Underside
Golf
Cemeteries

More quotes by Saul Bellow

Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
Saul Bellow
Image
Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
Saul Bellow
Image
Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
Death deserves dignity.
Saul Bellow
Image
If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.
Saul Bellow
Image
I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.
Saul Bellow
Image
It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.
Saul Bellow
Image
Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
Saul Bellow
Image
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?
Saul Bellow
Image
Conquered people tend to be witty.
Saul Bellow
Image
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you.
Saul Bellow
Image
To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
Saul Bellow
Image
The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it.
Saul Bellow
Image
Fidelity is for phonographs
Saul Bellow