dangling quotes

Theories of a wholly good or a wholly malevolent world strike him as foolish. Of those who believe in a wholly good world he says that they do not understand depravity. As for pessimists, the question he asks them is, "Is that all they see, such people?" For him, the world is both, and therefore it is neither. Merely to make a judgement of that kind is, to representatives of either position, a satisfaction. Whereas, to him, judgement is second to wonder, to speculation on men, drugged and clear, jealous, ambitious, good, tempted curious, each in his own time and with his customs and motives, and bearing the imprint of strangeness in the world. In a sense, everything is good because it exists. Or, good or not good, it exists, it is ineffable, and, for that reason, marvelous.

There is only one worth-while sort of work, that of the imagination.

With all the respect we seem to have for perishable stuff, we have easily accustomed ourselves to slaughter. We are all, after some fashion, the beneficiaries of that slaughter and yet we have small pity for the victims. This has not come with the war, we were ready before the war ever started; it only seems more apparent now. We do not flinch at seeing those lives struck out; nor would those who were killed have suffered any more for us, if we, not they, had been the victims. I do not like to think what we are governed by. I do not like to think about it. It is not easy work, and it is not safe. Its kindest revelation is that our senses and our imaginations are somehow incompetant.

But now I am struck by the arrogance with which I set people apart into two groups: those with worth-while ideas and those without them.

Saul Bellow, The Dangling Man