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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.

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
Wish
Unexamined
Living
Examined
Given
Socrates
Makes
Alternative
Life
Alternatives
Worth
Dead
Rather

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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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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.
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We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
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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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Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
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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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Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
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A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
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For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.
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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.
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It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.
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Facts always are sensational.
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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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The two real problems in life are boredom and death.
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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.
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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.
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Excuse me ... but I reject your definitions of me.
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