The Best Saul Bellow quotes

Let the enemies of life step down. — Saul Bellow

The two real problems in life are boredom and death. — Saul Bellow

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is. — Saul Bellow

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned. — Saul Bellow

Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent? — Saul Bellow

You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half. — Saul Bellow

There’s a kind of emptiness at the center of life … nothing to form your life on, or by. — Saul Bellow

When the striving ceases, there is life waiting as a gift. — Saul Bellow

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. — Saul Bellow

Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential. — Saul Bellow

The dream of man’s heart … is that life may complete in significant pattern. — Saul Bellow

Art is order, made out of the chaos of life. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

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

I am a true adorer of life, and if I can’t reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation. — Saul Bellow

You have to fight for your life. That’s the chief condition on which you hold it. — Saul Bellow

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

Unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing. — Saul Bellow

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… — Saul Bellow

Well, everybody has a history. — Saul Bellow

There is no old age of the soul. — Saul Bellow

Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born. — Saul Bellow

A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death. — Saul Bellow

Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul. — Saul Bellow

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure. — Saul Bellow

Art––the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos––art, not politics, is the remedy. — Saul Bellow

I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul. — Saul Bellow

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

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. — Saul Bellow

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

A man is only as good as what he loves. — Saul Bellow

Love is the most potent cosmetic. — Saul Bellow

I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don’t you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible. — Saul Bellow

I love solitude but I prize it most when company is available. — Saul Bellow

In expressIng love we belong among the undeveloped countries. — Saul Bellow

Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn’t destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love––or what good is it? — Saul Bellow

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

It’s goodbye to reality when love sets in. — Saul Bellow

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. — Saul Bellow

Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich. Don’t have a loud mouth. The more you love people the more they’ll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love. — Saul Bellow

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

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

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

One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine. — Saul Bellow

Every treasure is guarded by dragons. That’s how you can tell it’s valuable. — Saul Bellow

As long as I could keep improving my mind, I figured, I was doing okay. — Saul Bellow

My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn’t it mean anything? — Saul Bellow

One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance and this fantasy (?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment. — Saul Bellow

Conquered people tend to be witty. — Saul Bellow

Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair–minded who are in the right. — Saul Bellow

The only real distinction at this dangerous moment in human history and cosmic development has nothing to do with medals and ribbons. Not to fall asleep is distinguished. Everything else is mere popcorn. — Saul Bellow

Human character is smaller now, people don’t have durable passions; they’ve replaced passions with excitement. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

How should I know why! I didn’t invent human beings, Iggy. — Saul Bellow

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

What do women want?’ ‘They eat green salad and drink human blood. — Saul Bellow

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred. — Saul Bellow

It’s not up to me … to make the world consistent. — Saul Bellow

You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside. — Saul Bellow

What Homo sapien imagines, he may slowly convert himself to. — Saul Bellow

And what about all the good I have in my heart–does it mean anything? — Saul Bellow

The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it–that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know. — Saul Bellow

Only self–hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was ‘broken. — Saul Bellow

A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive? — Saul Bellow

I’ve discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you. — Saul Bellow

The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow