The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence. Saul Bellow More Quotes by Saul Bellow More Quotes From Saul Bellow The hour that burst the spirit's sleep. Saul Bellow hours spirit sleep Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability. Saul Bellow instability balance fighting Do we always, always to the point of misery, do a thing? Saul Bellow misery Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities. Saul Bellow boredom conviction blessing Guys like you make life easy for some women. Saul Bellow like-you guy easy I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood. Saul Bellow eccentric acceptance self 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 toby challenges people 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 kissing plant faces A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study. Saul Bellow novel study writing One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance and this fantasy (?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment. Saul Bellow mad people ideas 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 hypocrite writing country I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, 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 fate character men I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed. Saul Bellow essentials tables book I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side. Saul Bellow figs price-tag two-sides 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 impulse democratic underestimate 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 real philosophy art A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself. Saul Bellow millennials soul would-be 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 political europe america 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 soul trying ideas The sand swallows burst out of their scupper holes in the bluffs and out over the transparent drown of the water, back again to the white, to the brown, to the black, from moving to stock-still sand waves and water-worked woods and roots that hugged and twisted in the sun. Saul Bellow roots white moving
