Wie Gott in Frankreich'' was the expression used by the Jews of Eastern Europe to describe perfect happiness. I puzzled over this simile for many years, and I think I can interpret it now. God would be perfectly happy in France because he would not be troubled by prayers, observances, blessings and demands for the interpretation of difficult dietary questions. Surrounded by unbelievers He too could relax toward evening, just as thousands of Parisians do at their favorite cafes. There are few things more pleasant, more civilized than a tranquil terrasse at dusk. Saul Bellow
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Paris was all so... Parisian. I was captivated by the wonderful wrongness of it all - the unfamiliar fonts, the brand names in the supermarket, the dimensions of the bricks and paving stones. Children, really quite small children, speaking fluent French! - David Nicholls

  2. Oh, well, it might look like a patterned world, laid out in prim design, but to those living there it could never be so simple. They were as alive as she: that old peasant contriving to outwit the cold; that woman anxiously counting her comical... - Rachel Field

  3. I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers. - Ernest Hemingway

  4. To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you. - Ernest Hemingway

  5. I should like one day, as some anonymous pedestrian revisiting the scenes of these memories, to follow on the heels of an attentive reader - here are some - and to relish his delight when, with this book in his pocket, he finds himself in... - Jacques Yonnet

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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