Isaac Leib Peretz quotes

A stranger's rose is but a thorn. (Isaac Leib Peretz)
Don't look up to heaven, for what will you see in the sky, except stars, luminous but cold, wholly insensitive to pity? View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
A people's memory is history; and as a man without a memory, so a people without a history cannot grow wiser, better. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
In the second and third exiles we have served as a living protest against greed and hate, against physical force, against "might makes right!" View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Prayer sometimes dulls the hunger of the pauper, like a mother's finger thrust into the mouth of her starving baby. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Ugliness is the greatest of all sins. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
A heap of bricks is not yet a house. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
We take a drink only for the sake of the benediction. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
[About Jews] By nature we are like all other human beings, yet our people is unlike others, because our life is different, our history is different, our teacher is the Exile. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Youth is fair, a graceful stag, Leaping, playing in a park. Age is gray, a toothless hag, Stumbling in the dark. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
To be of the eternal, you must be of the earth. (Isaac Leib Peretz)
It is not only individuals-peoples too cannot live merely for themselves. The whole world must be redeemed. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
If the husband sits on a chair in the Garden of Eden, his wife is his footstool. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
In this world it is very dangerous to be weak. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
[About Jews] Among other nations, the vital problems are: a good crop, extension of the boundaries, strong armies, colonies; among us, if we wish to be true to ourselves, the vital questions are: conscience, freedom, culture, ethics. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
A letter depends on how you read it, a melody on how you sing it. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Yiddish, the language which will ever bear witness to the violence and murder inflicted on us, bear the marks of our expulsions from land to land, the language which absorbed the wails of the fathers, the laments of the generations, the poison and bitterness of history, the language whose precious jewels are the undried, uncongealed Jewish tears. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
The worst dog gets the best bone. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Prosperity may be found in small as in big business. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
Purim is the birthday of the first Schutz-Jude, the first Jewish toady to foreign royalty. (Isaac Leib Peretz)
At the Throne of Glory it is not the nobly-born that are beloved, but the nobly-risen. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
[About Jews] Sheer egotism compels us to the purest love of mankind as a whole.... Our hearts are like a sponge, receptive to all the newest humanitarian ideas; and our sympathy goes out to all the unfortunate, all the oppressed. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
We are more than a people.... We are of a pure blood. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
In the hands of the Jew, the reddest of all flags has been placed forcibly, and he has been told: "Go, go on and on, with all the liberators, with all fighters for a better tomorrow, with all destroyers of Sodoms. But never may you rest with them.... Pay everywhere the bloodiest costs of liberation, but be unnamed in all emancipation proclamations, or be rarely and scarcely mentioned."... The people cursed and blessed to be the last of the redeemed, to be eternally bleeding, the highest soaring expression of the divine in life. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz