Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and… — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
“Now: the first requirement of stability in a human being was that the said human being should really desire to exist. This… — 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
As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to… — Saul Bellow Copy Share
“If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid.… — 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 in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that's what their power is. There's one image… — Saul Bellow Copy Share
“For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a… — 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
“External life being so mighty, the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you… — 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 we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedomwhich is bordered on all sides by isolationis that we think so well… — Saul Bellow Copy Share
“On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every race and genius, possessors of every… — Saul Bellow Copy Share
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 change that accelerated with the boom after the war. . . . There has been a surrender to pragmatism; the true is what makes you successful and the false is what makes you fail. But I… — Saul Bellow Copy Share
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by. — Saul Bellow Copy Share Image
