“Life, said Samuel Butler, is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument—that, friends, is real wisdom.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Mimi didn't care about secrecy. She led a proclaimed life, and once she got talking she held back nothing.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“In the end you can't save your soul and life by thought. But if you think , the least of the consolation… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
The dream of man's heart ... is that life may complete in significant pattern. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“This rest and well-being were only a momentary difference in the strange lining or variable silk between life and void.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Do you have feelings? There are correct and incorrect ways of indicating them. Do you have an inner life? It is nobody's… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. But the over-examined life makes you wish you were dead. Given the alternative,… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“But can thought wake you from the dream of existence? Not if it becomes a second realm of confusion, another more complicated… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Not that long disease, my life, but that long convalescence, my life. The liberal-bourgeois revision, the illusion of improvement, the poison of… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
One of the booby traps of freedom - which is bordered on all sides by isolation - is that we think so… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“It’s the hysterical individual who allows his life to be polarized by simple extreme antitheses like strength—weakness, potency—impotence, health—sickness.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot!… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Towards the end of your life you have something like a pain schedule to fill out—a long schedule like a federal document,… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love,… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Public life drives out private life. The more political our society becomes (in the broadest sense of ‘political’ — the obsessions, the… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we are all put together. We are so proud of our… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Anyhow, I had found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“These, said Conrad, knew the world by systematic examination. To begin with the artist had only himself; he descended within himself and… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Charlie, you know where I am, don't you? All right, Charlie, this isn't literature. This is life.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“He yelled, "Charlie, you know where I am, don't you? All right, Charlie, this isn't literature. This is life.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything? — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn't destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love--or what… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Not that life should end is so terrible in itself, but that it should end with so many disappointments in the essential.” — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we are all put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“But now the emphasis has shifted to making it. People have surrendered their personal moral objectives to government or schools or psychologists. It’s a… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
![“Public life drives out private life. The more political our society becomes (in the broadest sense of ‘political’ — the obsessions, the compulsions of collectivity) the more individuality seems lost. … [N]ational purpose is now involved with the manufacture of commodities in no way essential to…” quote by Saul Bellow](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/451/saul-bellow-558_herzog_public-life-drives-out-private-life-the_957986.jpg)
