Top 450 Saul Bellow Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.”

— Saul Bellow

102. “A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.”

— Saul Bellow

103. “I’m glad I haven’t lived in vain.”

— Saul Bellow

104. “You don’t know the meaning of true love if you think it can be deliberately selected. You just love, that’s all. A natural force, irresistible.”

— Saul Bellow

105. “Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.”

— Saul Bellow

106. “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

107. “The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.”

— Saul Bellow

108. “I am moneys medium. It passes through me- taxes, insurance, mortgage, child support, rent, legal fees. All this dignified blundering costs plenty.”

— Saul Bellow

109. “Death deserves dignity.”

— Saul Bellow

110. “Unless you’re completely exploded, there’s always something to be grateful for.”

— Saul Bellow

111. “No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.”

— Saul Bellow

112. “It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.”

— Saul Bellow

113. “California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn’t really need. You can quote me on that.”

— Saul Bellow

114. “But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn’t last forever? There may be something in this. And bliss, just the opposite, is eternal? There is no time in bliss. All the clocks were thrown out of heaven.”

— Saul Bellow

115. “Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.”

— Saul Bellow

116. “I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person.”

— Saul Bellow

117. “Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.”

— Saul Bellow

118. “When I didn’t argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.”

— Saul Bellow

119. “I am an American – Chicago born.”

— Saul Bellow

120. “The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking?”

— Saul Bellow

121. “As the wicked flee when none pursueth, so does the middle-class wrestle when none contendeth. They cried out for freedom, it came down on them in a flood. Nothing remains but a few floating timbers of psychotherapy.”

— Saul Bellow

122. “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.”

— Saul Bellow

123. “Some people, if they didn’t make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.”

— Saul Bellow

124. “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

125. “O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.”

— Saul Bellow

126. “A man may say, “From now on I’m going to speak the truth.” But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he’s even done speaking.”

— Saul Bellow

127. “The revolutions of the twentieth century, the liberation of the masses by production, created private life but gave nothing to fill it with.”

— Saul Bellow

128. “That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real.”

— Saul Bellow

129. “Some people embrace their gifts with gratitude. Others have no use for them and can think only of overcoming their weaknesses. Only their defects interest and challenge them. Thus those who hate people may seek them out. Misanthropes often practice psychiatry. The shy become performers. Natural thieves look for positions of trust. The frightened make bold moves.”

— Saul Bellow

130. “Who controls everything? Old men of this type. Without needs. They don’t need therefore they have. I need, therefore I don’t have.”

— Saul Bellow

131. “Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters.”

— Saul Bellow

132. “I am sure you were sincere. Not insincere. True insincerity is hard to find.”

— Saul Bellow

133. “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

134. “It is my childish mind that thinks people are ready to give it just because you need it.”

— Saul Bellow

135. “I might have added, as it entered my mind to do, that some people found satisfaction in being. Being. Others in becoming. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always have to make explanations or offer justifications of the Being people. While the Being people provoke these explanations.”

— Saul Bellow

136. “It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.”

— Saul Bellow

137. “The earth is a huge ball which nothing holds up in space except its own motion and magnetism, and we conscious things who occupy it believe we have to move too, in our own space. We can’t allow ourselves to lie down and not to do our share and imitate the greater entity.”

— Saul Bellow

138. “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

139. “Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.”

— Saul Bellow

140. “You do all you can to humanize and familiarize the world, and suddenly it becomes more strange than ever. The living are not what they were, the dead die again and again, and at last for good.”

— Saul Bellow

141. “My balance comes from instability.”

— Saul Bellow

142. “Human character is smaller now, people don’t have durable passions; they’ve replaced passions with excitement.”

— Saul Bellow

143. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

145. “The value of literature lies in these intermittent ‘true impressions.’ A novel moves back and forth between the world of objects, of actions, of appearances, and that other world, from which these ‘true impressions’ come and which moves us to believe that the good we hang on to so tenaciously – in the face of evil, so obstinately – is no illusion.”

— Saul Bellow

146. “But privately when things got very bad I often looked into books to see whether I could find some helpful words, and one day I read, “The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness first is not required.”

— Saul Bellow

147. “Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.”

— Saul Bellow

148. “Do you have feelings? There are correct and incorrect ways of indicating them. Do you have an inner life? It is nobody’s business but your own. Do you have emotions? Strangle them.”

— Saul Bellow

149. “Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.”

— Saul Bellow

150. “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