. [T]o live in an inspired condition, to know truth, to be free, to love another, to consummate existence, to abide with death in clarity of consciousness - without which, racing and conniving to evade death, the spirit holds its breath and hopes to be immortal because it does not live - is no longer a rarefied project. Just as machinery has embodied ideas of good, so the technology of destruction has also acquired a metaphysical character. The practical questions have thus become the ultimate questions as well. Annihilation is no longer a metaphor. Good and Evil are real. The inspired condition is therefore no visionary matter. It is not reserved for gods, kings, poets, priests, shrines, but belongs to mankind and to all of existence. Saul Bellow
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike. - Oscar Wilde
  2. The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned - Antonio Gramsci
  3. A man must not be without shame, for the shame of being without shame is shamelessness indeed. - Mencius
  4. Dove la moralità è troppo forte l'intelletto perisce. - Friedrich Nietzsche
  5. My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing, ' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be. - Frank Herbert
More Quotes By Saul Bellow
  1. It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.
  2. A man is only as good as what he loves.
  3. Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
  4. A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
  5. The old continued to have one resurgence of foolishness after another, until the organism gave out altogether.
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