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373acc1
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I knew by this time what Thea thought of these people and in fact of most people, with their faulty humanity. She couldn't stand them. And what her eccentricity amounted to was that she proposed a different kind of humanity altogether. I guess nothing restrains people from demanding ideal conditions. Very little restrains them from anything. Thea's standard was high, but she wasn't exactly to blame as having arbitrarily set it high. For whe..
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Saul Bellow |
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80f21f6
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The same things are done by us, over and over, with terrible predictability. One may be forgiven, in view of this, for wishing at least to associate with beauty.
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Saul Bellow |
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f6b48a2
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There's the most extraordinary, unheard of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it...the agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way.
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Saul Bellow |
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1bd855f
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Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself - Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols. Make it the object of imitation to reach and release the high qualities. Make peace therefore with intermediacy and representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be.
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originality
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Saul Bellow |
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f93e7b7
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This development is possibly related to the fact that so much of "value" has been absorbed by technology itself. It is "good" to electrify a primitive area. Civilization and even morality are implicit in technological transformation...New techniques are in themselves bien pensant and represent not only rationality but benevolence...Romantic individuals (a mass of them by now) accuse this mass civilization of obstructing their attainment of ..
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Saul Bellow |
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34a74be
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Emancipation resulting in madness. Unlimited freedom to choose and play a tremendous variety of roles with a lot of coarse energy.
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madness
unlimited-freedom
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Saul Bellow |
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09d73de
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He wondered at times whether he didn't belong to a class of people secretly convinced they had an arrangement with fate; in return for docility or ingenuous good will they were to be shielded from the worst brutalities in life.
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fate
life
good-will
brutality
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Saul Bellow |
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f8a28bb
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The sun of that chilishness goes on shining even when the larger bodies of hotter stars have risen to smelt you and cover you with their influence. The recenter stars may be more critical, more in the eye, but that earlier sun still remains a long time.
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Saul Bellow |
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359decd
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I don't know how it all at once came to me to talk a lot, tell jokes, kick up, and suddenly have views. When it was time to have them, there was no telling how I picked them from the air.
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Saul Bellow |
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8f72634
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it greatly bothered him that I had such a flunky job, washing cages and sweeping up dogs' hair; and also that I was no longer a college man but trying to keep up on Helmholtz who was a dead number to him; in other words, that I should be of the unformed darkened-out mass. It was often that way with me, that people would feel the world owed me distinctness.
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Saul Bellow |
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2eaeea7
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Fantasia, fantasia, fantasia. Si trasforma in realta. Essa sorregge, essa altera, essa redime!
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Saul Bellow |
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a9f8bf7
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Well, I need a job. Something that'll leave me the free time I want." "I like the way you arrange your life. What do you intend to do with this free time?" "I intend to use it." I didn't like the implication of this. Why should he need his time free and I be questioned?"
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Saul Bellow |
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68e03a8
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Look out! Oh, you chump and weak fool, you are one of a humanity that can't be numbered and not more than the dust of metals scattered in a magnetic field and clinging to the lines of force, determined by laws, eating, sleeping, employed, conveyed, obedient, and subject. So why hunt for still more ways to lose liberty? Why go toward, and not instead run from, the huge drag that threatens to wear out your ribs, rub away your face, splinter y..
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Saul Bellow |
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a0a45bf
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What this means is not a single Tower of Babel plotted in common, but hundreds of thousands of separate beginnings, the length and breadth of America. Energetic people who build against pains and uncertainties, as weaker ones merely hope against them.
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america
origins
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Saul Bellow |
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4010dfb
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God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few.
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salvation
redemption
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Saul Bellow |
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9c9744d
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The lesson of an American life like my father's... is that achievements are compatible with decency (112).
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Saul Bellow |
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a0716a0
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Herzog abandoned this theme with characteristic abruptness
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Saul Bellow |
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59fcc6d
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Sometimes I wonder," I said, "if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn't make sure first that they can defend themselves."
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Saul Bellow |
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ab81a12
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Conquered people tend to be witty.
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Saul Bellow |
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c7e09f2
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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Saul Bellow |
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d28e66a
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I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.
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Saul Bellow |
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b53ecbf
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No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
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Saul Bellow |
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dbc651f
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All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
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Saul Bellow |
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cbe70fe
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A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.
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Saul Bellow |
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581190a
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You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
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Saul Bellow |
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38bc3d0
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Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
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Saul Bellow |
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3e4f2c2
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What is imposed on us by birth and environment is what we are called upon to overcome.
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Saul Bellow |