110+ Saul Bellow Quotes On Freedom, Freedom Of Speech And Writing

Saul Bellow was an American novelist from the mid-20th century. He was born in Canada, but moved to the United States at an early age. He is best known for writing novels such as The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, and Herzog. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Saul Bellow on leadership, love, life.

Top 10 Saul Bellow Quotes

1. A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
2. There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
3. I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.
4. Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
5. The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.
6. Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
7. Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
8. You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
9. 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.
10. A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

Saul Bellow Short Quotes

• People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
• Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.
• We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
• I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
• The first undressing of two lovers is a most special event.
• A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.
• Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
• ... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
• The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.
• One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.

Saul Bellow Quotes About Love

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. — Saul Bellow

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.' — Saul Bellow

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure. — Saul Bellow

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

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

I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible. — Saul Bellow

I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. — Saul Bellow

I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available. — Saul Bellow

The only truly intersting side of the matter was the intimate design of the injury, the fact that it was so penetrating, custom-made exactly to your measure. It's fascinating that hatred should be so personal as to be almost loving. The knife and the wound aching for each other. — Saul Bellow

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

Saul Bellow Quotes About Life

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is. — Saul Bellow

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

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

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. — Saul Bellow

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

The two real problems in life are boredom and death. — Saul Bellow

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

My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything? — Saul Bellow

One of the booby traps of freedom - which is bordered on all sides by isolation - is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

The dream of man's heart ... is that life may complete in significant pattern. — Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Quotes About Writing

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac. — Saul Bellow

I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous. — Saul Bellow

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

I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it. — Saul Bellow

I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent. — Saul Bellow

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study. — Saul Bellow

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

A writer is a reader moved to emulation. — Saul Bellow

The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions. — Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Quotes About Death

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

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

(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born. — Saul Bellow

Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything — Saul Bellow

Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all. — Saul Bellow

Death deserves dignity. — Saul Bellow

A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death. — Saul Bellow

Great pressure is brought to bear to make us undervalue ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches that each of us is an inestimable prize. There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death. Therefore we value and are ashamed to value ourselves. — Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Quotes About Person

All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems! — Saul Bellow

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection. — Saul Bellow

A person either creates or destroys. There is no neutrality. — Saul Bellow

I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person. — Saul Bellow

All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. — Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Famous Quotes And Sayings

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) — Saul Bellow

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

Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it -- they should, because they put it all in beforehand. — Saul Bellow

Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand. — Saul Bellow

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger. — Saul Bellow

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

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

The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence. — Saul Bellow

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

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

The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters. — Saul Bellow

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature. — Saul Bellow

Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters — Saul Bellow

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that. — Saul Bellow

Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated. — Saul Bellow

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

Fidelity is for phonographs — Saul Bellow

Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels. — Saul Bellow

I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. — Saul Bellow

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately. — Saul Bellow

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees. — Saul Bellow

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities. — Saul Bellow

Erotic practices have become diversified. Sex used to be a single-crop farming, like cotton or wheat; now people raise all kinds of things. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

Unless you're completely exploded, there's always something to be grateful for. — Saul Bellow

You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that. — Saul Bellow

Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right. — Saul Bellow

...is the carbon molecule lined with thought? — Saul Bellow

For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it. — Saul Bellow

It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent. — Saul Bellow

It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite. — Saul Bellow

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

There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover. — Saul Bellow

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things. — Saul Bellow

Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability. — Saul Bellow

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

But a man's character is his fate... and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles. — Saul Bellow

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group? — Saul Bellow

Art -- the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos -- art, not politics, is the remedy. — Saul Bellow

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

Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately. — Saul Bellow

Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue. — Saul Bellow

The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature. (Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young) — Saul Bellow

De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse. — Saul Bellow

The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art. — Saul Bellow

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance. — Saul Bellow

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." This impressed me so deeply that I went around saying it to myself. But then I forgot which book it was. — Saul Bellow

In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good. — Saul Bellow

The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether. — Saul Bellow

Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was "broken. — Saul Bellow

You have one of two choices. Either you can panic and start making frantic attempts to reform under the glare of these awful critical eyes, or you can just say, "The hell with you! I know what I'm doing. If you don't yet, it's because you haven't given me an attentive reading. — Saul Bellow

In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me? — Saul Bellow

To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy. — Saul Bellow

In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer. — Saul Bellow

Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you. — Saul Bellow

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

We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans -- convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution. — Saul Bellow

Art is order, made out of the chaos of life. — Saul Bellow

She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread. — Saul Bellow

It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too. — Saul Bellow

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

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

Each man has his own batch of poems. — Saul Bellow

Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence. — Saul Bellow

Life Lessons by Saul Bellow

1. Saul Bellow teaches us to be resilient in the face of adversity and to embrace our unique perspectives and experiences.
2. He emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and the need to constantly challenge ourselves and our beliefs.
3. He encourages us to strive for a life of meaning and purpose, and to never give up on our dreams and aspirations.