Inspirational Quotes by Saul Bellow — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“I was lucky. I got away with it.” He meant that his bad start, his mistakes, the things that might have wrecked him, had somehow combined to establish him. He had almost fallen in with that part of humanity of which he was frequently mindful . . . the part that did not get away with it—the lost, the outcast, the overcome, the effaced, the ruined.”

“There is no limit to the amount of intelligence invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.”

“He was looking for the Knight of Faith, the real prodigy. That real prodigy, having set its relations with the infinite, was entirely at home in the finite. Able to carry the jewel of faith, making the motions of the infinite, and as a result needing nothing but the finite and the usual. Whereas others sought the extraordinary in the world. Or wished to be what was gaped at.”

“Death watches. So if you have some happiness, conceal it. And when your heart is full, keep your mouth shut also.”

“Death is going to take the boundaries away from us, that we should no more be persons. That's what death is about. When that is what life also wants to be about, how can you feel except rebellious?”

“And everything soon must change. Men would set their watches by other suns than this. Or time would vanish. We would need no personal names of the old sort in the sidereal future, nothing being fixed. We would be designated by other nouns. Days and nights would belong to the museums. The earth a memorial park, a merry-go-round cemetery. The seas powdering our bones like quartz, making sand, grinding our peace for us by the aeon. Well, that would be good - a melancholy good.”

“The earth was a grave: our life was lent to it by its elements and had to be returned: a time came when the simple elements seemed to long for release from the complicated forms of life, when every element of every cell said, "Enough!" The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb. Passion for the infinite caused by the terror, by timor mortis, needed material appeasement.”

“I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.”

“With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything...”

“A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.”

“The old continued to have one resurgence of foolishness after another, until the organism gave out altogether.”

“Everybody wants to have intimate conversations, but the smart fellows don't give out, only the fools. The smart fellows talk intimately about the fools, and examine them all over and give them advice.”

“I might have added, as it entered my mind to do, that some people found satisfaction in being. Being. Others in becoming. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always have to make explanations or offer justifications of the Being people. While the Being people provoke these explanations.”

“It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.”