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

“Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. Sometimes it hurts, but when you are Real you don't mind being hurt. It doesn't happen all at once. You become. Once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, quote from The Velveteen Rabbit


“I’m sorry.” I know it’s the universal default, but the problem is, one’s first knee-jerk response when someone says “I’m sorry” is to say “It’s okay.” We are programmed from kindergarten, from the first time the inevitable snot-nosed kid knocks over our blocks, to forgive. And it’s not okay, it’s as far from okay as it can really get, but there you are, tricked by a sociolinguistic tic into affirming that it is.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from How To Talk To A Widower


“She was my freedom, yet I was her cage.”
― Brittainy C. Cherry, quote from The Gravity of Us


“Feo shook her head; she couldn't speak. The moments in which the world turns suddenly kind can feel like a punctured lung. She stood in the marble hall and cried until tears flooded down her nose and chin and dropped on to the heads of the two bloodstained wolves at her feet.”
― Katherine Rundell, quote from The Wolf Wilder


“Once the moon gets to be full somebody - some man or other - goes up every day and slices bits of one side until there isn't any more,and then after a bit a new one grows. Men do that with all sorts of things, actually - rose bushes for instance.... The man who slices the bits off brings them down here and then they're used for making those lights on the cars. Clever isn't it... They only last about one night, I should think, because you hardly ever see them shining by day.”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs


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