Best Saul Quotes & Sayings

A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone. — Saul Bellow

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are 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. — Saul Bellow

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book. — Saul Bellow

Sometimes when an idea flashes, you distrust it because it seems too easy. You qualify it with all kinds of evasive phrases because you're timid about it. But often, this turns out to be the best idea of all. — Saul Bass

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. — Saul Alinsky

Yes, there is a science to the aroma of sleeping women

(and to think of the girlfriend I was tempted to break up with because she slept too much)

i now know, they NURTURED here there: they slept in packs dreamt in cycles nursed her in shifts and became her ON ROTATION — Saul Williams

Saul wanted to destroy his best warrior, David, instead of helping David destroy his real enemies. Lesson: The very person you are fighting against may be your greatest asset. — Robin M. Bertram

The faithful witness, like ... Socrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silent ... He is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet. — John Ralston Saul

A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom. — Gary Saul Morson

Every (Christian) generation has a choice: to go out like [King] Saul or to go out like Paul. — Russell D. Moore

Maybe you are Saul's quarter-life crisis, but so what? Maybe he's yours. Or maybe you two are the luckiest people in the world and you've just found your fireworks-in-the-sky, holding-hands-until-you-die Forever Person. Guess what? There are drawbacks either way.
Maybe you break up and it sucks, but then you heal and move on and fall in love again. Or maybe this is it, the last person you'll ever have butterflies for, your last first kiss, but you get to grow up together, start your life together sooner. And you know what else? You don't have to be afraid to walk away either way... — Emily Henry

The distinctions between advertising and marketing are blurring, requiring new roles and new forms of consumer-centric marketing. — Saul Berman

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. — Saul Bellow

There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves. — Saul Williams

He yelled, Charlie, you know where I am, don't you? All right, Charlie, this isn't literature. This is life. — Saul Bellow

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred. — Saul Bellow

Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. — Saul Alinsky

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created. — Philip Schultz

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. — Saul D. Alinsky

All effective actions require the passport of morality. — Saul

An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth
truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing ... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations ... — Saul Alinsky

Art itself is underserved when we don't realize the power of it. — Saul Williams

A good tactic is one your people enjoy. — Saul

And then he went from Saul to Paul, from being the best at being a Jew to being the best at being a Christian. Only, at some point he realized that no one could really pull that off. That's when Paul finally understood grace. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Don't take chances. Take vitamins. — Helen Saul Case

I am not immersed in self-admiration. — Saul Leiter

I like it best when two ideas collide, like when you have a crazed attitude towards women combined with a crazed attitude towards the Vietnamese. I like that. Even if it's not true, I don't care whether it's true or false. I just do it. — Peter Saul

You can't do anything that's not political in this time and age. — Saul Williams

This is America, and you have the right to remain sick. If you choose to treat yourself and your family, that is within your rights, and is necessarily your sole decision based on what you know to be best. — Andrew Saul

That's swell. That's what I call answering like a man. When is your birthday?" "In January." "I'd have sworn to it. So is mine. I believe the highest types are born in January. It's barometric - you can look it up in Ellsworth Huntington. The parents make love in spring when the organism is healthiest and then the best specimens are conceived. If you want children you should plan to knock up your dear one in that season. Ancient wisdom is right. Now science comes lately and finds it out. — Saul Bellow

If I'm lucky, in a month from now, best-case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha, — Saul

Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in hope ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy "acceptance" from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen. — A.W. Tozer

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone. — Saul Bellow

Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century. — Saul David

Vitamin C is the world's best natural antibiotic, antiviral, antitoxin and antihistamine. This book's recurring emphasis on vitamin C might suggest that I am offering a song with only one verse. Not so. As English literature concentrates on Shakespeare, so orthomolecular (megavitamin) therapy concentrates on vitamin C. Let the greats be given their due. The importance of vitamin C cannot be overemphasised. — Andrew W. Saul

In the West, of course, God has been dead for some time. What remains is religion as social belief, which is at best a moral code and at worst social etiquette. — John Ralston Saul

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study. — Saul Bellow

The artist is an educator of artists of the future who are able to understand and in the process of understanding perform unexpected - the best - evolutions. — Saul Steinberg

I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history. — Saul Williams

The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves. — John Ralston Saul

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. — Saul Bellow

Jesus says, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5). You see these dynamics when David arrives at King Saul's camp, bringing food for his older brothers. David is surprised to hear Goliath taunting the Israelites and their God. He is shocked that no one has the courage to challenge Goliath and blurts out, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?" (1 Samuel 17:26). David reacts to the split between Israel's public faith and its battlefield ... — Paul Miller

Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful. — Cynthia Ozick

'The Prince' was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. 'Rules for Radicals' is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away. — Saul Alinsky

He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. "Twenty grand," I told him. "The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch? — Rex Stout

There were about 30 children at one stage, running around like savages at a place called Callow Hill, near Monmouth, which was owned by my grandparents. They lived in the big house, but my dad had five brothers and a sister, and they all lived in various houses scattered on the hill. — Saul David

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. — Saul Bellow

You don't know the meaning of true love if you think it can be deliberately selected. You just love, that's all. A natural force, irresistible. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence. — Saul Williams

Use vitamins in place of drugs. This takes some moxie to do, for we have been taught to be consumers of medicine. We have been taught that anything cheap and safe cannot possibly be effective. — Andrew Saul

Since the last question, also the first one, the quesiton of death, offers us the interesting alternatives of disintegrating ourselves by our own wills in proof of our "freedom," or the acknowledging that we owe a human life to this waking spell of existence, regardless of the void. — Saul Bellow

I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on. — Saul Rubinek

Oh shame, shame! Oh crying shame! How can we? Why do we allow ourselves? What are we doing? The last little room of dirt is waiting. Without windows. So for God's sake make a move, Henderson, put forth effort. You, too, will die of this pestilence. Death will annihilate you and nothing will remain, and there will be nothing left but junk ... While something still is
now! For the sake of all, get out! — Saul Bellow

Maybe America didn't need art and inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it, the less we. — Saul Bellow

I wish there were easy answers to people's health questions. There aren't. There are answers, all right, but they are not easy. — Andrew Saul

If I'm at a book signing, and someone decides to take me to task, it can make for quite a sticky moment. — Saul David

Again and again the schools which form the twentieth century's elites throughout the West refer to their Socratic heritage. The implication is that doubt is constantly raised in their search for truth. In reality the way they teach is the opposite of a Socratic dialogue. In the Athenian's case every answer raised a question. With the contemporary elites every question produces an answer. Socrates would have thrown the modern elites out of his academy. — John Ralston Saul

Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but do more. Copy many well-said things. Pierce them together. Assimilate them. Make the process of reading them a way to form the mind and shape the soul. As anthologies can never be complete, we will never exhaust the ways quotations can enrich our lives. — Gary Saul Morson

We sometimes think of quotations as extracts from larger texts, but some quotations originated complete unto themselves. — Gary Saul Morson

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

Depressives cannot surrender childhood
not even the pains of childhood. — Saul Bellow

People cannot do what they cannot think, and they cannot think what they cannot say. — John Ralston Saul

My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus ... I rhyme. — Saul Williams

Panic: A highly underrated capacity thanks to which individuals are able to indicate clearly that something is wrong ... Given their head, most humans panic with great dignity and imagination. This can be called democratic expression or practical common sense. — John Ralston Saul

Yves. You are goint to love him all over again when you meet him, believe me. You're married.'
'I'm what? But I can't be more than eighteen!'
'My son is very persuasive,' said Saul proudly. — Joss Stirling

But she's a nut, and nuts win. — Saul Bellow

I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. — Saul Leiter

Rights are a protection from society. But only by fulfilling their obligations to society can the individual give meaning to that protection.
(V - From Ideology Towards Equilibrium) — John Ralston Saul

Saul is a devout believer only in himself, and he was convinced that the religious faith of others, if manipulated skillfully, was an excellent path to the power he sought. He was studying religions of the world in order to pick up tips on how to build his own. — Rysa Walker