I.L. Peretz Quotes

#1. In the second and third exiles we have served as a living protest against greed and hate, against physical force, against "might makes right"!

I.L. Peretz

#2. [About the diaspora] Canaan is too small for God's children. The Land of Israel will spread through all lands!

I.L. Peretz

#3. A heap of bricks is not yet a house.

I.L. Peretz

#4. Time is change, transformation, evolution.

I.L. Peretz

#5. The worst dog gets the best bone.

I.L. Peretz

#6. We take a drink only for the sake of the benediction.

I.L. Peretz

#7. Prosperity may be found in small as in big business.

I.L. Peretz

#8. Don't look up to heaven, for what will you see in the sky, except stars, luminous but cold, wholly insensitive to pity?

I.L. Peretz

#9. No one in our town ever really died, because no one in our town ever lived, or did good or evil. We had no saints or sinners, only daydreamers in the World of Illusion.

I.L. Peretz

#10. In this world it is very dangerous to be weak.

I.L. Peretz

#11. A stranger's rose is but a thorn.

I.L. Peretz

#12. If the husband sits on a chair in the Garden of Eden, his wife is his footstool.

I.L. Peretz

#13. To be of the eternal, you must be of the earth.

I.L. Peretz

#14. Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox.

I.L. Peretz

#15. Youth is fair, a graceful stag, Leaping, playing in a park. Age is gray, a toothless hag, Stumbling in the dark.

I.L. Peretz

#16. [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.

I.L. Peretz

#17. Ugliness is the greatest of all sins.

I.L. Peretz

#18. Purim is the birthday of the first Schutz-Jude , the first Jewish toady to foreign royalty.

I.L. Peretz

#19. [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.

I.L. Peretz

#20. [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.

I.L. Peretz

#21. A letter depends on how you read it, a melody on how you sing it.

I.L. Peretz

#22. It is not only individuals peoples too cannot live merely for themselves. The whole world must be redeemed.

I.L. Peretz

#23. Prayer sometimes dulls the hunger of the pauper, like a mother's finger thrust into the mouth of her starving baby.

I.L. Peretz

#24. At the Throne of Glory it is not the nobly-born that are beloved, but the nobly-risen.

I.L. Peretz

#25. A people's memory is history; and as a man without a memory, so a people without a history cannot grow wiser, better.

I.L. Peretz