"People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned."
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Quote collection
Saul Bellow quotes (page 2 of 12)
231 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes - and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight."
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"Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand."
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"Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining."
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"Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions."
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"Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity."
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"There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger."
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"A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself."
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"In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California."
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"Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches."
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"The life of every citizen is becoming a business. This, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business."
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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."
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"With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything."
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"I'm glad I haven't lived in vain."
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"We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals."
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"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."
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"I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side."
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"A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life."
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"The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence."
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"A plan relieves you of the torment of choice."
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