Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
Saul BellowRead
I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the human tendency to defer obligations and the burden of unfulfilled communication as one ages.
Saul Bellow's quote explores the idea of how people often hold back from expressing their feelings or fulfilling obligations, especially as they grow older. It suggests that while thoughts of loved ones are frequent, the pressure to create the perfect correspondence leads to inaction, resulting in a mental 'warehouse' filled with unfulfilled intentions. This highlights the human tendency to procrastinate and avoid confronting personal vulnerabilities, especially concerning relationships and mortality.
Themes
CommunicationIntentionsAgingRelationshipsProcrastinationObligation
In practice
Example use cases
In a heartfelt letter to a friend who feels neglected, I might share this quote to express understanding of our shared struggles with communication.
More from Saul Bellow
All quotes →When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul BellowRead
In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?
Saul BellowRead
I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'
Saul BellowRead
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul BellowRead
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
Saul BellowRead
Similar quotes
Great God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know?
Henry MillerRead
We have no evidence whatsoever that the soul perishes with the body.
Mahatma GandhiRead
It must be so,-Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'T is Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!
Joseph AddisonRead
In the end, we are our choices.
Jeff BezosRead
I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.
Eugene IonescoRead
My being Muslim is only one part of my identity. But particularly in India and the world over, a concerted effort is being made to diminish all other aspects of identity and only take your religious identity as who you are.
Shabana AzmiRead