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In The History Of The World Many Souls Have Been, Are, And Will Be, And With A Little Reflection This Is Marvelous And Not Depressing. Many Jerks Are Made Gloomy About It, For They Think Quantity Buries Them Alive. That's Just Crazy. Numbers Are Very Dangerous, But The Main Thing About Them Is That They Humble Your Pride. And That's Good.

-Saul Bellow

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In The History Of

Saul Bellow

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In The History Of The World Many Souls Have Been, Are, And Will Be, And With A Little Reflection This Is Marvelous And Not Depressing. Many Jerks Are Made Gloomy About It, For They Think Quantity Buries Them Alive. That's Just Crazy. Numbers Are Very Dangerous, But The Main Thing About Them Is That They Humble Your Pride. And That's Good.

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A Man Should Be Able To Hear, And To Bear, The Worst That Could Be Said Of Him.

If I Had A Child Of School Age, I Would Send Him To One Of The Waldorf Schools.

It's Goodbye To Reality When Love Sets In.

Death Is The Dark Backing A Mirror Needs If We Are To See Anything

I Have, Perhaps, A Slave-like Constitution Which Is Too Easily Restrained By Bonds; It Then Becomes Rebellious And Bursts Out In A Comic Revolution.

Excuse Me ... But I Reject Your Definitions Of Me.

The Hour That Burst The Spirit's Sleep.

I Am More Stupid About Some Things Than Others; Not Equally Stupid In All Directions; I Am Not A Well-rounded Person.

Conquered People Tend To Be Witty.

Socrates Said The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living. But The Over-examined Life Makes You Wish You Were Dead. Given The Alternative, I'd Rather Be Living.

The Terms Which, In His Inmost Heart, Each Man Knows. As I Know Mine. As All Know. For That Is The Truth Of It — That We All Know, God, That We Know, That We Know, We Know, We Know.

I Am An American, Chicago Born – Chicago, That Somber City – And Go At Things As I Have Taught Myself, Free-style, And Will Make The Record In My Own Way: First To Knock, First Admitted; Sometimes An Innocent Knock, Sometimes A Not So Innocent. But A Man's Character Is His Fate, Says Heraclitus, And In The End There Isn't Any Way To Disguise The Nature Of The Knocks By Acoustical Work On The Door Or Gloving The Knuckles.

I Feel That Art Has Something To Do With The Achievement Of Stillness In The Midst Of Chaos.

But There Are Things You Can't Consult Anybody About.

A Novel Is Balanced Between A Few True Impressions And The Multitude Of False Ones That Make Up Most Of What We Call Life. It Tells Us That For Every Human Being There Is A Diversity Of Existences, That The Single Existence Is Itself An Illusion In Part, That These Many Existences Signify Something, Tend To Something, Fulfill Something; It Promises Us Meaning, Harmony, And Even Justice.

...there Is No Old Age Of The Soul.

Human Character Is Smaller Now, People Don't Have Durable Passions; They've Replaced Passions With Excitement.

...america Didn't Have To Fight Scarcity And We All Felt Guilty Before People Who Still Had To Struggle For Bread And Freedom In The Old Way ... We Weren't Starving, We Weren't Bugged By The Police, Locked Up In Madhouses For Our Ideas, Arrested, Deported, Slave Laborers Sent To Die In Concentration Camps. We Were Spared The Holocausts And Nights Of Terror. With Our Advantages We Should Be Formulating The New Basic Questions For Mankind. But Instead We Sleep. Just Sleep And Sleep, And Eat And Play And Fuss And Sleep Again.

We Mustn't Forget How Quickly The Visions Of Genius Become The Canned Goods Of Intellectuals.

The Two Real Problems In Life Are Boredom And Death.

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

Goodness Is Achieved Not In A Vacuum, But In The Company Of Other Men, Attended By Love.

I Seem To Have The Blind Self-acceptance Of The Eccentric Who Can't Conceive That His Eccentricities Are Not Clearly Understood.

A Person Either Creates Or Destroys. There Is No Neutrality.

I've Discovered That Rejections Are Not Altogether A Bad Thing. They Teach A Writer To Rely On His Own Judgment And To Say In His Heart Of Hearts, 'to Hell With You.'

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.

A Man Must Have Limits And Cannot Give In To The Wild Desires To Be Everything And Everyone And Everything To Everyone.

A Writer Is A Reader Moved To Emulation.

A Fool Can Throw A Stone In A Pond That 100 Wise Men Can Not Get Out.

I Have Begun In Old Age To Understand...that We Seldom If Ever Realize How Generous We Are To Ourselves, And Just How Stingy With Others.

Well, Everybody Has A History.

But Privately When Things Got Very Bad I Often Looked Into Books To See Whether I Could Find Some Helpful Words, And One Day I Read, "the Forgiveness Of Sins Is Perpetual And Righteousness First Is Not Required." This Impressed Me So Deeply That I Went Around Saying It To Myself. But Then I Forgot Which Book It Was.

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.

There Are Evils That Have The Ability To Survive Identification And Go On For Ever... Money, For Instance, Or War.

No Realistic, Sane Person Goes Around Chicago Without Protection.

The Dream Of Man's Heart ... Is That Life May Complete In Significant Pattern.

When We Ask For Advice, We Are Usually Looking For An Accomplice.

You're All Alone When You're A Writer. Sometimes You Just Feel You Need A Humanity Bath. Even A Ride On The Subway Will Do That. But It's Much More Interesting To Talk About Books. After All, That's What Life Used To Be For Writers: They Talk Books, Politics, History, America. Nothing Has Replaced That.

It Wasn't That He Was Specially Ungenerous But That He Put Things Off To Give His Generosity A Longer And More Significant Route.

Everybody Needs His Memories. They Keep The Wolf Of Insignificance From The Door.

We Are Funny Creatures. We Don't See The Stars As They Are, So Why Do We Love Them? They Are Not Small Gold Objects, But Endless Fire.

Death Is The Black Backing On The Mirror That Allows Us To See Anything At All.

When I Didn't Argue He Was Satisfied He Had Persuaded Me, And Was Not The First To Make That Mistake.

Each Man Has His Own Batch Of Poems.

The Ocean Was Waiting With Grand And Bitter Provocations, As If It Invited You To Think How Deep It Was, How Much Colder Than Your Blood Or Saltier, Or To Outguess It, To Tell Which Were Its Feints Or Passes And Which Its Real Intentions, Meaning Business.

Myself Is Thus And So, And Will Continue Thus And So. And Why Fight It? My Balance Comes From Instability.

...chaos Doesn't Run The Whole Show.

But She's A Nut, And Nuts Win.

There Was A Disturbance In My Heart, A Voice That Spoke There And Said, I Want, I Want, I Want! It Happened Every Afternoon, And When I Tried To Suppress It It Got Even Stronger.

Boredom Is An Instrument Of Social Control. Power Is The Power To Impose Boredom, To Command Stasis, To Combine This Stasis With Anguish. The Real Tedium, Deep Tedium, Is Seasoned With Terror And With Death.

The More Realistic You Are The More You Threaten The Grounds Of Your Own Art.

I’ve Had All The Monstrosity I Want.

If Women Are Expected To Do The Same Work As Men, We Must Teach Them The Same Things.

He Believed That He Must, That He Could And Would Recover The Good Things, The Happy Things, The Easy Tranquil Things Of Life. He Had Made Mistakes, But He Could Overlook These. He Had Been A Fool, But That Could Be Forgiven. The Time Wasted--must Be Relinquished. What Else Could One Do About It? Things Were Too Complex, But They Might Be Reduced To Simplicity Again. Recovery Was Possible.

We Are Always Looking For The Book It Is Necessary To Read Next.

I Am Moneys Medium. It Passes Through Me- Taxes, Insurance, Mortgage, Child Support, Rent, Legal Fees. All This Dignified Blundering Costs Plenty.

I Don't Like To Write From A Flat, Cold Position. You Must Like What You're Doing Very Much Or Like The People -- Either Like Them Or Hate Them. You Can't Be Indifferent.

The Flesh Would Shrink And Go, The Blood Would Dry, But No One Believes In His Mind Of Minds Or Heart Of Hearts That The Pictures Do Stop.

All A Writer Has To Do To Get A Woman Is To Say He's A Writer. It's An Aphrodisiac.

It's No Disgrace To Be A Private, You Know. Socrates Was A Plain Foot Soldier, A Hoplite.

Brother Raises A Hand Against Brother And Son Against Father (how Terrible!) And The Father Also Against Son. And Moreover It Is A Continuity-matter, For If The Father Did Not Strike The Son, They Would Not Be Alike. It Is Done To Perpetuate Similarity. Oh, Henderson, Man Cannot Keep Still Under The Blows.... A Hit B? B Hit C?--we Have Not Enough Alphabet To Cover The Condition. A Brave Man Will Try To Make The Evil Stop With Him. He Shall Keep The Blow. No Man Shall Get It From Him, And That Is A Sublime Ambition.

Retirement Is An Illusion. Not A Reward But A Mantrap. The Bankrupt Underside Of Success. A Shortcut To Death. Golf Courses Are Too Much Like Cemeteries.

I Think That New York Is Not The Cultural Centre Of America, But The Business And Administrative Centre Of American Culture.

She Was What We Used To Call A Suicide Blonde - Dyed By Her Own Hand.

Ninety Per Cent Of Life Is A Nightmare, Do You Think I Am Going To Get It Rounded Up To Hundred Per Cent?

...is The Carbon Molecule Lined With Thought?

Language Is A Spiritual Mansion In Which You Live And Nobody Has The Right To Evict You.

Is Our Species Crazy? Plenty Of Evidence.

People Don't Realize How Much They Are In The Grip Of Ideas. We Live Among Ideas Much More Than We Live In Nature.

How Should I Know Why! I Didn't Invent Human Beings, Iggy.

The Writer Cannot Make The Seas Of Distraction Stand Still, But He [or She] Can At Times Come Between The Madly Distracted And The Distractions.

Art -- The Fresh Feeling, New Harmony, The Transforming Magic Which By Means Of Myth Brings Back The Scattered Distracted Soul From Its Modern Chaos -- Art, Not Politics, Is The Remedy.

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.

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)

Unless You're Completely Exploded, There's Always Something To Be Grateful For.

Showing Gratitude

As For Types Like My Own, Obscurely Motivated By The Conviction That Our Existence Was Worthless If We Didn't Make A Turning Point Of It, We Were Assigned To The Humanities, To Poetry, Philosophy, Painting - The Nursery Games Of Humankind, Which Had To Be Left Behind When The Age Of Science Began. The Humanities Would Be Called Upon To Choose A Wallpaper For The Crypt, As The End Drew Near.

One Thought-murder A Day Keeps The Psychiatrist Away.

You Never Have To Change Anything You Got Up In The Middle Of The Night To Write.

Humankind Struggles With Collective Powers For Its Freedom, The Individual Struggles With Dehumanization For The Possession Of His Soul.

There Is Simply Too Much To Think About.

All Human Accomplishment Has This Same Origin, Identically. Imagination Is A Force Of Nature. Is This Not Enough To Make A Person Full Of Ecstasy? Imagination, Imagination, Imagination! It Converts To Actual. It Sustains, It Alters, It Redeems!

The Fact That There Are So Many Weak, Poor And Boring Stories And Novels Written And Published In America Has Been Ascribed By Our Rebels To The Horrible Squareness Of Our Institutions, The Idiocy Of Power, The Debasement Of Sexual Instincts, And The Failure Of Writers To Be Alienated Enough. The Poems And Novels Of These Same Rebellious Spirits, And Their Theoretical Statements, Are Grimy And Gritty And Very Boring Too, Besides Being Nonsensical, And It Is Evident By Now That Polymorphous Sexuality And Vehement Declarations Of Alienation Are Not Going To Produce Great Works Of Art Either.

Guys Like You Make Life Easy For Some Women.

Our Society, Like Decadent Rome, Has Turned Into An Amusement Society, With Writers Chief Among The Court Jesters

Because I Have Become Such A Solitary, And Not In The Aristotelian Sense: Not A Beast, Not A God. Rather, A Loner Troubled By Longings, Incapable Of Finding A Suitable Language And Despairing At The Impossibility Of Composing Messages In A Playable Key--as If I No Longer Understood The Codes Used By The Estimable People Who Wanted To Hear From Me And Would Have So Much To Reply If Only The Impediments Were Taken Away.

A Good Novel Is Worth More Then The Best Scientific Study.

But A Man's Character Is His Fate... And In The End There Isn't Any Way To Disguise The Nature Of The Knocks By Acoustical Work On The Door Or Gloving The Knuckles.

The Spirit Knows That Its Growth Is The Real Aim Of Existence.

Here We Write Well When We Expose Frauds And Hypocrites. We Are Great At Counting Warts And Blemishes And Weighting Feet Of Clay. In Expressing Love, We Belong Among The Underdeveloped Countries.

Psychoanalysis Pretends To Investigate The Unconscious. The Unconscious By Definition Is What You Are Not Conscious Of. But The Analysts Already Know What's In It - They Should, Because They Put It All In Beforehand.

There Are Times When The Most Practical Thing Is To Lie Down.

Practical Things

A Human Soul Devoid Of Longing Was A Soul Deformed, Deprived Of Its Highest Good, Sick Unto Death.

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.

California Is Like An Artificial Limb The Rest Of The Country Doesn't Really Need. You Can Quote Me On That.

And I'm Convinced That Knowing The Names Of Things Braces People Up.

At Moments I Dislike Having A Face, A Nose, Lips, Because He Has Them.

For God's Sake,' The Dog Is Saying, 'open The Universe A Little More!

How Could I Be Anything But A Dissenter? Who Wants The Opinion Of A Group?

Any Artist Should Be Grateful For A Naive Grace Which Puts Him Beyond The Need To Reason Elaborately.

Unfortunately For The Betterment Of Mankind It Is Not Always The Fair-minded Who Are In The Right.

In Here, The Human Bosom -- Mine, Yours, Everybody's -- There Isn't Just One Soul. There's A Lot Of Souls. But There Are Two Main Ones, The Real Soul And A Pretender Soul. Now! Every Man Realizes That He Has To Love Something Or Somebody. He Feels That He Must Go Outward. 'if Thou Canst Not Love, What Art Thou?' Are You With Me?

Unexpected Intrusions Of Beauty. This Is What Life Is.

Take Our Politicians: They're A Bunch Of Yo-yos. The Presidency Is Now A Cross Between A Popularity Contest And A High School Debate, With An Encyclopedia Of Cliches.

There's A Kind Of Emptiness At The Center Of Life ... Nothing To Form Your Life On, Or By.

Art Is Order, Made Out Of The Chaos Of Life.

I've Never Turned Over A Fig Leaf Yet That Didn't Have A Price Tag On The Other Side.

The Modern Reader (or Viewer, Or Listener: Let's Include Everybody) Is Perilously Overloaded. His Attention Is, To Use The Latest Lingo,'targeted' By Powerful Forces? Our Consciousness Is A Staging Area, A Field Of Operations For All Kinds Of Enterprises, Which Make Free Use Of It.

Readiness To Answer All Questions Is The Infallible Sign Of Stupidity.

(socrates) Said There Were Only Two Possibilities. Either The Soul Is Immortal Or, After Death, Things Would Be Again As Blank As They Were Before We Were Born.

... A Fellow Can't Predict What He Will Pick Up In The Form Of Influence.

The Only Real Distinction At This Dangerous Moment In Human History And Cosmic Development Has Nothing To Do With Medals And Ribbons. Not To Fall Asleep Is Distinguished. Everything Else Is Mere Popcorn.

I Must Play The Instrument I've Got.

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.

... Unless You Made Your Life A Turning Point, There Was No Reason For Existing.

O Lord! He Concluded, Forgive All These Trespasses. Lead Me Not Into Penn Station.

I Don't Know Exactly How It's Done. I Let It Alone A Good Deal.

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.

Boredom Is The Conviction That You Can't Change ... The Shriek Of Unused Capacities.

What Homo Sapien Imagines, He May Slowly Convert Himself To.

Writers Are Greatly Respected. The Intelligent Public Is Wonderfully Patient With Them, Continues To Read Them, And Endures Disappointment After Disappointment, Waiting To Hear From Art What It Does Not Hear From Theology, Philosophy, Social Theory, And What It Cannot Hear From Pure Science. Out Of The Struggle At The Center Has Come An Immense, Painful Longing For A Broader, More Flexible, Fuller, More Coherent, More Comprehensive Account Of What We Human Beings Are, Who We Are And What This Life Is For.

I Feel That Art Has Something To Do With The Achievement Of Stillness In The Midst Of Chaos. A Stillness Which Characterizes Prayer, Too, And The Eye Of The Storm. I Think That Art Has Something To Do With An Arrest Of Attention In The Midst Of Distraction.

Hapiness Can Only Be Found If You Can Free Yourself Of All Other Distractions.

With A Novelist, Like A Surgeon, You Have To Get A Feeling That You've Fallen Into Good Hands - Someone From Whom You Can Accept The Anesthetic With Confidence.

I Am An American – Chicago Born.

It's Not Up To Me ... To Make The World Consistent.

A Plan Relieves You Of The Torment Of Choice.

Anxiety Destroys Scale, And Suffering Makes Us Lose Perspective.

I Blame Myself For Not Often Enough Seeing The Extraordinary In The Ordinary. Somewhere In His Journals, Dostoyevky Remarks That A Writer Can Begin Anywhere, At The Most Commonplace Thing, Scratch Around In It Long Enough, Pry And Dig Away Long Enough, And Lo!, Soon He Will Hit Upon The Marvelous.

In The History Of The World Many Souls Have Been, Are, And Will Be, And With A Little Reflection This Is Marvelous And Not Depressing. Many Jerks Are Made Gloomy About It, For They Think Quantity Buries Them Alive. That's Just Crazy. Numbers Are Very Dangerous, But The Main Thing About Them Is That They Humble Your Pride. And That's Good.

I Pretended Not To Understand. One Of Life's Hardest Jobs, To Make A Quick Understanding Slow. I Think I Succeeded, Thought Herzog.

Americans Must Be The Most Sententious People In History. Far Too Busy To Be Religious, They Have Always Felt That They Sorely Needed Guidance.

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.

One Must Bear In Mind The Odd Angle Or Slant That The Rays Of Love Have To Take In Order To Reach A Heart Like Mine.

From Euclid To Newton There Were Straight Lines. The Modern Age Analyzes The Wavers.

A Millennial Belief In A Holy God May Have The Effect Of Deepening The Soul, But It Is Also Obviously Archaic, And Modern Influences Would Presently Bring Me Up To Date And Reveal How Antiquated My Origins Were. To Turn Away From Those Origins, However, Has Always Seemed To Me An Utter Impossibility. It Would Be A Treason To My First Consciousness To Un-jew Myself.

Only Self-hatred Could Lead Him To Ruin Himself Because His Heart Was "broken.

I Think That Art Has Something To Do With An Arrest Of Attention In The Midst Of Distraction.

People Can Lose Their Lives In Libraries. They Ought To Be Warned.

And What About All The Good I Have In My Heart - Does It Mean Anything?

A Man Is Only As Good As What He Loves.

Funny Valentines Day

Whoever Wants To Reach A Distant Goal Must Take Small Steps.

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.

The Main Reason For Rewriting Is Not To Achieve A Smooth Surface, But To Discover The Inner Truth Of Your Characters.

It Seems Hard For The American People To Believe That Anything Could Be More Exciting Than The Times Themselves. What We Read Daily And View On The Tv Has Thrust Imagined Forms Into The Shadow. We Are Staggeringly Rich In Facts, In Things, And Perhaps, Like The Nouveau Riche Of Other Ages, We Want Our Wealth Faithfully Reproduced By The Artist.

It Seems, After All That There Are No Nonpeculiar People.

It Is Sometimes Necessary To Repeat What All Know. All Mapmakers Should Place The Mississippi In The Same Location And Avoid Originality.

Associate With The Noblest People You Can Find; Read The Best Books; Live With The Mighty; But Learn To Be Happy Alone.

It Would Not Be Practical For Her To Hate Herself. Luckily, God Sends A Substitute, A Husband.

Love Is The Most Potent Cosmetic.

You Have One Of Two Choices. Either You Can Panic And Start Making Frantic Attempts To Reform Under The Glare Of These Awful Critical Eyes, Or You Can Just Say, "the Hell With You! I Know What I'm Doing. If You Don't Yet, It's Because You Haven't Given Me An Attentive Reading.

It's Hard For Writers To Get On With Their Work If They Are Convinced That They Owe A Concrete Debt To Experience And Cannot Allow Themselves The Privilege Of Ranging Freely Through Social Classes And Professional Specialties. A Certain Pride In Their Own Experience, Perhaps A Sense Of The Property Rights Of Others In Their Experience, Holds Them Back.

...i Am Much Better Now At Ambiguities.

The Best And Purest Human Beings, From The Beginning Of Time, Have Understood That Life Is Sacred.

The Body, She Says, Is Subject To The Force Of Gravity. But The Soul Is Ruled By Levity, Pure.

She's Very Pretty But She's Honey From The Icebox, If You Know What I Mean. Cold Sweets Won't Spread.

A Great Deal Of Intelligence Can Be Invested In Ignorance When The Need For Illusion Is Deep.

... An Era Of Turmoil And Ideological Confusion, The Principal Phenomenon Of The Present Age.

I Immersed Myself In The Periodic Table Gladly And Gratefully. There Is Nothing Superfluous Here, Everything This Book Contains Is Essential. It Is Wonderful Pure, And Beautifully Translated...i Was Deeply Impressed.

Nobody Asks You To Love The Whole World, Only To Be Honest, Ehrlich. Don't Have A Loud Mouth. The More You Love People The More They'll Mix You Up. A Child Loves, A Person Respects. Respect Is Better Than Love.

Certain Blood Will Be Given For Half Certain Reasons, As In All Wars.

De Tocqueville Considered The Impulse Toward Well-being As One Of The Strongest Impulses Of A Democratic Society. He Can't Be Blamed For Underestimating The Destructive Powers Generated By This Same Impulse.

I Am Deeply Moved When I Write. I Get Turned On By It. I've Never Used Any Drugs For Stimulation. I Don't Use Words Loosely. When I'm Working And The Right Word Comes, There Is An Answering Resonance Within Me. There Is Also A Hardness Of Intention That Goes With It. There Is No Idleness In It.

A Writer Is In The Broadest Sense A Spokesman Of His Community. Through Him That Community Comes To Know Its Heart. Without Such Knowledge, How Long Can It Survive?

Alternatives, And Particularly Desirable Alternatives, Grow Only On Imaginary Trees.

The Stillness In Art Characterizes Prayer, And The Eye Of The Storm.

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.

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?

We Are All Such Accidents. We Do Not Make Up History And Culture. We Simply Appear, Not By Our Own Choice. We Make What We Can Of Our Condition With The Means Available. We Must Accept The Mixture As We Find It - The Impurity Of It, The Tragedy Of It, The Hope Of It.

Fun Comes Hard - Like, Alas, Its Prarens, Pleasure And Happiness, Whom We Have To Pursue.

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.

We Take Foreigners To Be Incomplete Americans -- Convinced That We Must Help And Hasten Their Evolution.

I Labor, I Spend, I Strive, I Design, I Love, I Cling, I Uphold, I Give Way, I Envy, I Long, I Scorn, I Die, I Hide, I Want. Faster, Much Faster Than Any Man Could Make The Tally.

Great Pressure Is Brought To Bear To Make Us Undervalue Ourselves. On The Other Hand, Civilization Teaches That Each Of Us Is An Inestimable Prize. There Are, Then, These Two Preparations: One For Life And The Other For Death. Therefore We Value And Are Ashamed To Value Ourselves.

If I'm Out Of My Mind, It's All Right With Me, Thought Moses Herzog.

In An Age Of Enormities, The Emotions Are Naturally Weakened. We Are Continually Called Upon To Have Feelings - About Genocide, For Instance, Or About Famine Or The Blowing Up Of Passenger Planes - And We Are All Aware That We Are Incapable Of Reacting Appropriately. A Guilty Consciousness Of Emotional Inadequacy Or Impotence Makes People Doubt Their Own Human Weight.

Let The Enemies Of Life Step Down.

You Can Spend The Entire Second Half Of Your Life Recovering From The Mistakes Of The First Half.

I Would Like To Explain That I Consider Prayer Above All An Act Of Gratitude For Existence.

I Mean You Have Been Disappointed In Love, But Don't You Know How Many Things There Are To Be Disappointed In Besides Love? You Are Lucky To Be Still Disappointed In Love. Later It May Be Even More Terrible.

Fidelity Is For Phonographs

The Sand Swallows Burst Out Of Their Scupper Holes In The Bluffs And Out Over The Transparent Drown Of The Water, Back Again To The White, To The Brown, To The Black, From Moving To Stock-still Sand Waves And Water-worked Woods And Roots That Hugged And Twisted In The Sun.

One Of The Booby Traps Of Freedom - Which Is Bordered On All Sides By Isolation - Is That We Think So Well Of Ourselves. I Now See That I Have Helped Myself To The Best Cuts At Life's Banquet.

My Face Too Blind, My Mind Too Limited, My Instincts Too Narrow. But This Intensity, Doesn't It Mean Anything?

Erotic Practices Have Become Diversified. Sex Used To Be A Single-crop Farming, Like Cotton Or Wheat; Now People Raise All Kinds Of Things.

In Every Community There Is A Class Of People Profoundly Dangerous To The Rest. I Don't Mean The Criminals. For Them We Have Punitive Sanctions. I Mean The Leaders. Invariably The Most Dangerous People Seek The Power. While In The Parlors Of Indignation The Right-thinking Citizen Brings His Heart To A Boil. (p. 51)

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.

I'm Glad I Haven't Lived In Vain.

Do We Always, Always To The Point Of Misery, Do A Thing?

In Expressing Love We Belong Among The Undeveloped Countries.

Expressing Love

There Is An Immense, Painful Longing For A Broader, More Flexible, Fuller, More Coherent, More Comprehensive Account Of What We Human Beings Are, Who We Are And What This Life Is For.

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 Miserable Or Tragic, No Worse Than What We Invent.

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 Idea. That's How It Is With My Ideas; They Seem To Get Strong While I Weaken.

The Late Philosopher Morris R. Cohen Of Ccny Was Asked By A Student In The Metaphysics Course, Professor Cohen, How Do I Know That I Exist? The Keen Old Prof Replied, And Who Is Asking?

Live Or Die But Don't Poison Everything.

I Am A Phoenix Who Runs After Arsonists.

You Have, Like The External World, Your Own Phenomena Inside.

Strict Seriousness Was Far More Dangerous Than Any Joke.

The Secret Motive Of The Absent-minded Is To Be Innocent While Guilty. Absent-mindedness Is Spurious Innocence.

Open Discussion Of Many Major Public Questions Has For Some Time Now Been Taboo. We Can't Open Our Mouths Without Being Denounced As Racists, Misogynists, Supremacists, Imperialists Or Fascists. As For The Media, They Stand Ready To Trash Anyone So Designated.

Towards The End Of Your Life You Have Something Like A Pain Schedule To Fill Out - A Long Schedule Like A Federal Document, Only It's Your Pain Schedule. Endless Categories. First, Physical Causes - Like Arthritis, Gallstones, Menstrual Cramps. New Category, Injured Vanity, Betrayal, Swindle, Injustice. But The Hardest Items Of All Have To Do With Love. The Question Then Is: So Why Does Everybody Persist? If Love Cuts Them Up So Much.

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