A Quote by Saul Bellow

Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.
Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and shift underneath it. And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people—a great many people—who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes. But we know better.
How can you see something that isn't there?" yawned the Humbug, who wasn't fully awake yet. "Sometimes, it's much simpler than seeing things that are,"he said. "For instance, if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones." "Then where is Reality?" barked Tock. "Right here,"cried Alec, waving his arms.
Some people make you feel better about living. Some people you meet and you feel this little lift in your heart, this 'Ah', because there's something in them that's brighter or lighter, something beautiful or better than you, and here's the magic: instead of feeling worse, instead of feeling 'why am I so ordinary?', you feel just the opposite, you feel glad. In a weird way you feel better, because before this you hadn't realised or you'd forgotten human beings could shine so.
Even if you're unhappy, just pretend that you're happy. Eventually, your smile will be contagious to yourself. I had to learn that. I used to think, 'I'm being fake,' but you know what? Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable.
Even if you're unhappy, just pretend that you're happy. Eventually, your smile will be contagious to yourself. I had to learn that, I used to think, 'I'm being fake,' but you know what? Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable.
Here is the surprising truth: It's often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better.
I'm not any different than anybody else. But I do see a world, for me, that's getting better and better, not worse and worse. And I believe that world peace is coming quicker than we think. And I believe that people are not only yearning for it but will see a way to get it and help that way to come sooner. And it's going to be beautiful.
One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world.
Anyone I may have used should feel happy that they even had a use. It's better than being useless.
The only way to achieve something in the interior world is let-go - a kind of effortlessness, a relaxation. It is not a doing; it is nondoing. It is not action; it is inaction. And it seems difficult because everybody from the very beginning is told, `Do something; don`t just go on sitting there! Something is always better than nothing.` In the inner world these are not the laws. Nothing is better than everything.
All I'm saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process 'blueprinting' because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world.
If we can continue to come together and work on small things little by little, at least it's something. It's a start. At least now there's a lot more talk about climate change and the Earth's state than when I was a kid. I guess it's better late than never? But it's also very tricky because this is something that's so important to so many of us, and a lot of people don't see it that way. But hopefully, we can get all our points across to them - one by one, one person at a time.
To be young and aware is to know you’re being lied to; to know that a bright green future is possible; to know that we can reimagine the world, rebuild our cities, redesign our lives, retool our factories, distribute innovation and creativity and all live in a world that is not only better than the alternative, but much better than the world we have now.
Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it that is what you compare it to;- something better and you'll feel worse; something worse and you'll feel better.
I always say I want to leave this world in a better state than when I arrived, and I continue to live by that message. So I'm going to do what I can to make the world a better place but also just make sure that I'm happy as well.
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. Even the richest, most surprising and wild imagination is not as rich, wild and surprising as reality. The task of the poet is to pick singular threads from this dense, colorful fabric.
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