Top 450 Saul Bellow Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Saul Bellow

2. “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”

— Saul Bellow

Featured in: Quotes About Writing

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

— Saul Bellow

4. “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

5. “Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.”

— Saul Bellow

6. “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.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

Featured in: Reading Quotes

8. “Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That’s the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real – the here-and-now. Seize the day.”

— Saul Bellow

9. “You have to fight for your life. That’s the chief condition on which you hold it.”

— Saul Bellow

10. “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.”

— Saul Bellow

11. “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

12. “Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.”

— Saul Bellow

13. “A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.”

— Saul Bellow

14. “If I’m out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.”

— Saul Bellow

15. “There is simply too much to think about.”

— Saul Bellow

16. “I want to tell you, don’t marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it’s adultery.”

— Saul Bellow

17. “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

18. “A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.”

— Saul Bellow

19. “One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”

— Saul Bellow

20. “Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.”

— Saul Bellow

21. “When the striving ceases, there is life waiting as a gift.”

— Saul Bellow

22. “Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

24. “The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

26. “A man is only as good as what he loves.”

— Saul Bellow

27. “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

28. “Conquered people tend to be witty.”

— Saul Bellow

29. “There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.”

— Saul Bellow

30. “Each man has his own batch of poems.”

— Saul Bellow

31. “To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.”

— Saul Bellow

32. “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

33. “But there are things you can’t consult anybody about.”

— Saul Bellow

34. “The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.”

— Saul Bellow

35. “People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”

— Saul Bellow

Featured in: Thought Provoking Quotes, Reading Quotes

36. “She’s very pretty but she’s honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won’t spread.”

— Saul Bellow

37. “A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.”

— Saul Bellow

38. “Every treasure is guarded by dragons. That’s how you can tell it’s valuable.”

— Saul Bellow

39. “From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.”

— Saul Bellow

40. “To know how it feels to be a seaweed you have to get in the water.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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.”

— Saul Bellow

Featured in: Country Quotes

45. “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

46. “But she’s a nut, and nuts win.”

— Saul Bellow

47. “A writer is a reader moved to emulation.”

— Saul Bellow

48. “The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.”

— Saul Bellow

49. “Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.”

— Saul Bellow

50. “I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can’t conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.”

— Saul Bellow