574 Quotes by Saul Bellow

It wasn’t that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.

For God’s sake,′ the dog is saying, ’open the universe a little more!

Live or die but don’t poison everything.

And what about all the good I have in my heart – does it mean anything?

Everyone got bitterness in his chosen thing. It might be in the end that the chosen thing that the chosen thing in itself is bitterness because to arrive at the chosen thing needs courage, because it’s intense, and intensity is what the feeble humanity of us can’t take for long. And also the chosen thing can’t be one that we already have, since what we already have there isn’t much use or respect for.

As long as I could keep improving my mind, I figured, I was doing okay.

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

A man like you, humble for life, who wants to feel and live, has trouble – not wanting,” said Tamkin in his parenthetical fashion, “to exchange an ounce of soul for a pound of social power – he’ll never make it without help in a world like this.

I don’t know exactly how it’s done. I let it alone a good deal.