Quotes from Mr. Sammler's Planet

Saul Bellow ·  288 pages

Rating: (2.8K votes)


“Being right was largely a matter of explanations.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet


“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.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet


“Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself - Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols. Make it the object of imitation to reach and release the high qualities. Make peace therefore with intermediacy and representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet


“The Indian temperament is so excitable, you know.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet


“But fathers are soft on daughters. Look how Dad favors Angela. He gave her ten times more. Because she reminded him of Mae West. He was always smiling at her boobs. He wasn't aware of it. Mother and I saw it.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet



“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.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet


About the author

Saul Bellow
Born place: in Lachine, Quebec, Canada
Born date June 10, 1915
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Popular quotes

“When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.

The way I liked best was letting go a poisonous spider in his bed. It would bite him and he'd be dead and swollen up and I would shudder to find him so. Of course I would call the rescue squad and tell them to come quick something's the matter with my daddy. When they come in the house I'm all in a state of shock and just don't know how to act what with two colored boys heaving my dead daddy onto a roller cot. I just stand in the door and look like I'm shaking all over.

But I did not kill my daddy. He drank his own self to death the year after the County moved me out. I heard how they found him shut up in the house dead and everything. Next thing I know he's in the ground and the house is rented out to a family of four.

All I did was wish him dead real hard every now and then. All I can say for a fact that I am better off now than when he was alive.”
― Kaye Gibbons, quote from Ellen Foster


“both deaths were equally vain, neither of them shortened the war by so much as a second; but in both cases, the man or men who killed them believed it was just and necessary; and if they were wrong, who’s to blame? What”
― Jonathan Littell, quote from The Kindly Ones


“You snored,” Kestrel said. “I did not.” “You did. You snored so loudly that the people in my dreams complained.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Winner's Crime


“I was so good at being a kid, and so terrible at being whatever I was now.”
― John Green, quote from Turtles All the Way Down


“So I am your distraction?"
"You," He said,his face coming within inches of mine, " Are my only hope.”
― Rebecca Maizel, quote from Infinite Days


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