Saul Bellow Quotes

1915–2005 Canada

Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988.

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Also known as: Bellow, Saul

Random Saul Bellow quote

59 quotes

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

Dangling Man (1944)

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.

To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976)

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

In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened.

It All Adds Up (1994)

This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.

It All Adds Up (1994)

Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

There's something that remains barbarous in educated people, and lately I've more and more had the feeling that we are nonwondering primitives.

It All Adds Up (1994)

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.

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

The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

Humboldt's Gift (1975)

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

Humboldt's Gift (1975)

The principles of Western liberalism seem no longer to lend themselves to effective action. Deprived of the expressive power, we are awed by it, have a hunger for it, and are afraid of it.

It All Adds Up (1994)

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

It All Adds Up (1994)

Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, political thinkers, to name only a few of the categories affected, must woo their readers, viewers, listeners, from distraction.

It All Adds Up (1994)

We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.

Herzog (1964)

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976)

There is no need to make an inventory of the times. It is demoralizing to describe ourselves to ourselves yet again.

It All Adds Up (1994)

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.

Humboldt's Gift (1975)

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.

Introduction to The Closing of the American Mind (1988)

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

It All Adds Up (1994)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Saul Bellow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.