Seize the Day Quotes

“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Facts always are sensational. ”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“ ”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance. You don't know what you've got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Every other man spoke a language entirely his own, which he had figured out by private thinking; he had his own ideas and peculiar ways. If you wanted to talk about a glass of water, you had to start back with God creating the heavens and earth; the apple; Abraham; Moses and Jesus; Rome; the Middle Ages; gunpowder; the Revolution; back to Newton; up to Einstein; then war and Lenin and Hitler. After reviewing this and getting it all straight again you could proceed to talk about a glass of water. "I'm fainting, please get me a little water." You were lucky even then to make yourself understood. And this happened over and over and over with everyone you met. You had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth, and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every race and genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence - 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.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“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.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“One thing should be clear to you now. Money-making is aggression. That's the whole thing. The functionalistic explanation is the only one. People come to the market to kill. They say, 'I'm going to make a killing.' It's not accidental. Only they haven't got the genuine courage to kill, and they erect a symbol of it. The money. They make a killing by fantasy.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Oh, God,” Wilhelm prayed, “Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“It is my childish mind that thinks people are ready to give it just because you need it.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“What art thou?' Nothing. That's the answer. Nothing. In the heart of hearts- Nothing! So of course you can't stand that and want to be Something, and you try. But instead of being this Something, the man puts it over on everybody instead.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“You don’t know what you’ve got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality …”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Everyone was like the faces on a playing card, upside down either way.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Someone had said, and Wilhelm agreed with the saying, that in Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Everybody wants to have intimate conversations, but the smart fellows don't give out, only the fools. The smart fellows talk intimately about the fools, and examine them all over and give them advice.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“A person can become tired of looking himself over and trying to fix himself up. You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Who controls everything? Old men of this type. Without needs. They don’t need therefore they have. I need, therefore I don’t have.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“You had to talk with yourself in the daytime and reason with yourself at night. Who else was there to talk to in a city like New York?”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“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”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“You were lucky even then to make yourself understood. And this happened over and over and over with everyone you met. You had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth, and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood, not to know the crazy from the sane, the wise from the fools, the young from the old or the sick from the well.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Innately, the female knows how to cripple by sickening a man with guilt. It is a very special destruct, and she sends her curse to make a fellow impotent.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“You take too many pills of every kind—first stimulants and then depressants, anodynes followed by analeptics, until the poor organism doesn’t know what’s happened.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“don't marry suffering. Some
people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat
together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy
they think it's adultery."
Yes, thought Wilhelm, suffering is the only kind of life
they are sure they can have, and if they quit suffering
they're afraid they'll have nothing.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“And where was that day? Past and dead. Whose humiliating memories were these? His and not his father's. What had he to think back on that he could call good? Very, very little. You had to forgive. First, to forgive yourself, and then, general forgiveness.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Всеки приличаше на образ от карти за игра - с едното лице нагоре, а другото надолу.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“Those are the only two classes of people there are. Some want to live, but the great majority don’t.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“I’m deprived of my children.” Wilhelm bit his lip. It was too late to turn away. The anguish struck him. “I pay and pay. I never see them. They grow up without me. She makes them like herself. She’ll bring them up to be my enemies”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“So many questions impossible to answer could not be asked about an honest man. Nor perhaps about a sane man.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day