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
Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.
Italo CalvinoRead
The greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it has been driven by crime and crime rates. It's just not true.
Michelle AlexanderRead
There's been such a sense that there's one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It's so pervasive that it's not even hidden.
Elizabeth WarrenRead
If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ's Kingdom, and of His love.
John OwenRead
The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
Henry David ThoreauRead
It is a truth universally acknowledged that from puberty onwards, the female body is disgusting and unruly and must be tamed, trimmed and tinted to within an inch of its life before it can be allowed to roam freely in the public eye.
Stella YoungRead