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4703f98
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For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!
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Saul Bellow |
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765f641
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As long as I could keep improving my mind, I figured, I was doing okay.
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Saul Bellow |
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cd7ef91
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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?
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Saul Bellow |
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6a80f97
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And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that's what their power is. There's one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than ..
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life
world-view
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Saul Bellow |
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80f745b
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Fidelity is for phonographs
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Saul Bellow |
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62d974e
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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.
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Saul Bellow |
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be54c19
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A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
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Saul Bellow |
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9b2daf6
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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)
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Saul Bellow |
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55873a5
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The hour that burst the spirit's sleep...
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Saul Bellow |
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67c3566
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I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog.
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Saul Bellow |
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061900c
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I don't actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I'm beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul.
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Saul Bellow |
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a530519
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I am willing without further exercise in pain to open my heart. And this needs no doctrine or theology of suffering. We love apocalypses too much, and crisis ethics and florid extremism with its thrilling language. Excuse me, no. I've had all the monstrosity I want.
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Saul Bellow |
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d7110f5
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Sentiment and brutality, never one without the other, like fossils and oil.
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Saul Bellow |
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4dcbd73
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Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.
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Saul Bellow |
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9d93d14
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Guys like you make life easy for some women.
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Saul Bellow |
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e7a6335
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Every treasure is guarded by dragons. That's how you can tell it's valuable.
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value
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Saul Bellow |
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325b9ea
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Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining.
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Saul Bellow |
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3fe1273
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Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was "broken."
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Saul Bellow |
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03e25cb
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External life being so mighty, the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances. This way he can't get justice and he can't give justice, but he can live. And this is what mere humanity always does. It's made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each ..
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Saul Bellow |
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d52654f
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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.
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Saul Bellow |
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58c5a8a
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Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miser..
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Saul Bellow |
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04b96d7
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Oh, God," Wilhelm prayed, "Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy."
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sadness
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Saul Bellow |
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f3a9e7c
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Of course, 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.
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Saul Bellow |
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e2c2507
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I am something of a crank about sleep, for if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there's nothing really wrong with me. It's just another . That's how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken.
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Saul Bellow |
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3ce6996
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One thing should be clear to you now. Money-making is aggression. That's the whole thing. The functionalistic explanation is the only one. People come to the market to kill. They say, 'I'm going to make a killing.' It's not accidental. Only they haven't got the genuine courage to kill, and they erect a symbol of it. The money. They make a killing by fantasy.
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Saul Bellow |
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8d6b985
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Theirs was not a marriage that could last. Madeleine had never loved him. She was telling him that. 'It's painful to have to say I never loved you. I never will love you, either,' she said. 'So there's no point in going on.' Herzog said, 'I do love you, Madeleine.' Step by step, Madeleine rose in distinction, in brilliance, in insight. Her color grew very rich, and her brows, and that Byzantine nose of hers, rose, moved; her blue eyes gaine..
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Saul Bellow |
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683e5d4
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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.
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Saul Bellow |
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6d00d2a
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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.
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Saul Bellow |
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3610eda
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Sometimes I wished I could become a shoemaker too.
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Saul Bellow |
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db59e72
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In the end you can't save your soul and life by thought. But if you , the least of the consolation prizes is the world.
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Saul Bellow |
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54f943c
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Do you have feelings? There are correct and incorrect ways of indicating them. Do you have an inner life? It is nobody's business but your own. Do you have emotions? Strangle them.
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Saul Bellow |
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c1b1743
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He didn't ask "Where will you spend eternity?" as religious the-end-is-near picketers did but rather, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?"
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democracy
soul
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Saul Bellow |
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54a925c
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To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
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Saul Bellow |
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4f01089
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For Christ's sake don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything.
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Saul Bellow |
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63f84e3
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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.
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Saul Bellow |
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81d9197
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between human beings there are only two alternatives, either brotherhood or crime.
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Saul Bellow |
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df5ebe8
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So things go on as before with those who think a great deal and effect nothing, and those who think nothing evidently doing it all...
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Saul Bellow |
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b71a975
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The wheels of the cars stormed underneath. Woods and pastures ran up and receded, the rails of sidings sheathed in rust, the dipping racing wires, and on the right the blue of the Sound, deeper, stronger than before. Then the enameled shells of the commuters' cars, and the heaped bodies of junk cars, the shapes of old New England mills, with narrow, austere windows; villages, convents; tugboats moving in the swelling fabric-like water; and ..
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Saul Bellow |
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6460e85
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And what about all the good I have in my heart--doesn't it mean anything?
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Saul Bellow |
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81b7dd6
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Shall I run back into the desert ... and stay there until the devil has passed out of me and I am fit to meet human kind again without driving it to despair at the first look? I haven't had enough desert yet.
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despair
introspection
reflection
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Saul Bellow |
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02963bb
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Society is what beats me. Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among people and there's the devil to pay.
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Saul Bellow |
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f770788
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Being right was largely a matter of explanations.
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Saul Bellow |
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f1c7adc
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You have to have the power to employ pain, to repent, to be illuminated, you must have the opportunity and even the time.
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Saul Bellow |
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dfce7b5
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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.
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Saul Bellow |