Saul Bellow - Humboldt's Gift (1975)

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No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.

Saul Bellow
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
I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.

Saul Bellow
The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

Saul Bellow
There's almost nothing personal in success. Success is always money's own success.

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
And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.

Saul Bellow
Once you had read the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, you knew that everyday life was psychopathology.

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
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
You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.

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

Saul Bellow
An era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.

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