Top 450 Saul Bellow Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Art has to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”

— Saul Bellow

102. “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

103. “There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover.”

— Saul Bellow

104. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

106. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

108. “The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

110. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

114. “Death deserves dignity.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

116. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

123. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

127. “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

128. “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

129. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

133. “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

134. “My balance comes from instability.”

— Saul Bellow

135. “The earth was a grave: our life was lent to it by its elements and had to be returned: a time came when the simple elements seemed to long for release from the complicated forms of life, when every element of every cell said, “Enough!” The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb. Passion for the infinite caused by the terror, by timor mortis, needed material appeasement.”

— Saul Bellow

136. “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

137. “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

138. “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

139. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

141. “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

142. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

145. “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

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

— Saul Bellow

147. “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

148. “At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.”

— Saul Bellow

149. “A man like you, humble for life, who wants to feel and live, has trouble – not wanting,” said Tamkin in his parenthetical fashion, “to exchange an ounce of soul for a pound of social power – he’ll never make it without help in a world like this.”

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow