Saul Bellow Quotes

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

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

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

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.

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.

...there is no old age of the soul.

There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.

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.

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.

A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.

A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.

A man is only as good as what he loves.

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

A person either creates or destroys. There is no neutrality.

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.

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)

Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.

I would like to explain that I consider prayer above all an act of gratitude for existence.