I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we are all put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. 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.
Quotations by:
Bellow, Saul
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that 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.
All human accomplishment has the 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!
Saul Bellow (1915-2005) Canadian-American writer
Henderson the Rain King, ch. 18 [King Dahfu] (1959)
(Source)
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
A man is only as good as what he loves.
Saul Bellow (1915-2005) Canadian-American writer
Seize the Day (1956)
Boredom therefore can arise from the cessation of habitual functions, even though these may be boring too. It is also the shriek of unused capacities, the doom of serving no great end or design, or contributing to no master force.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.