Talmud Quotes

#1. According to the Talmud, if a funeral procession and a wedding procession cross paths, the wedding party goes first. Life is more important than death.

Anita Diamant

#2. If the eye could see the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible. - Talmud, Berakhot, 6

Umberto Eco

#3. The Talmud says that "blessed is He who has created all these to serve me." German politician Julius Streicher said, "It is an open secret that Jews do not work, but rather let others work for them.

H.W. Charles

#4. The Jewish Talmud is right in saying that the prayer in which there is no mention of the kingdom of God is not a prayer at all (Berakoth 21a).

John F. MacArthur Jr.

#5. Whoever saves one life, saves a world entire." - Talmud

Danielle Steel

#6. There are thousands of codes in the Torah which are decoded by the Talmud.

H.W. Charles

#7. As a child I received instruction in both the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

Albert Einstein

#8. I'm a Larry David fan, right? And it seems to me that Jewish history from the Talmud on has been a self-deprecating, self-critical kind of humor.

Peter Eisenman

#9. All the questions discussed in the Talmud and related rabbinic literature are normative questions: either they are questions of what one is to think or what one is to do. Every prescribed thought has some practical implication; every prescribed act has some theoretical implication.

David Novak

#10. I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals.

Michel Onfray

#11. In the Talmud (a record of discussions of Jewish law and ethics by ancient rabbis) it is said that charity is equal in importance to all the other commandments combined, and that Jews should give at least 10 percent of their income as tzedakah.

Peter Singer

#12. The holy book in the longest continuous use - the Talmud - commands the observant one to thank his maker every day that he was not born a woman.

Christopher Hitchens

#13. The Talmud states, "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

Bridges McCall

#14. If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race.

Abraham Cahan

#15. I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

Elie Wiesel

#16. My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.

Elie Wiesel

#17. Keep score, which is what the Talmud recognizes as a distinction between work and play that renders a game unfit for the Sabbath.

John Thorn

#18. 41 Mishnah Avot 3.23. 4 The compilation of the Talmud Rabbi Tarfon said, The day is short and there is much work, the workman are lazy but the wages are high, and the master of the house is pressing.1 The academies in Babylon

Harry Freedman

#19. If you study the Talmud you please God even more than you do by praying or fasting.

Abraham Cahan

#20. The following sentiments are illustrative of the philosophy of the Talmud: "Love peace and pursue it at any cost."

Frederic Farrar

#21. According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, Grow, grow.

Barbara Brown Taylor

#22. Whoever reflects on four things, it were better he had never been born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, and that which is after. - Talmud, Hagigah 2.1

Umberto Eco

#23. On 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' it takes almost a year to get 10 shows written. It always reminds me of my old yeshiva days, where you used to sit over a piece of Talmud and analyze everything that was going on.

David Steinberg

#24. JHVH is no longer the national God of Israel. The Talmud guards against the very suspicion of a "Judaized God" by insisting that every benediction to Him as "God the Lord" must add "King of the Universe" rather than the formula of the Psalms, "God of Israel.

Kaufmann Kohler

#25. The Jewish conception of the Jews as the Chosen People who must eventually rule the world forms indeed the basis of Rabbinical Judaism ... The Jewish religion now takes its stand on the Talmud rather than on the Bible.

Nesta Helen Webster

#26. Educator Norman Lamm said, In Judaism, there are 613 biblical commandments, and the Talmud says that the chief commandment of all is study.

H.W. Charles

#27. For me, study is a divine and daily imperative, and I study a page of Talmud daily so that I am not only teaching. My teaching is constantly being fed by my learning.

Erica Brown

#28. My mother, whose family was heavily rabbinic, said she wanted me to continue the family tradition in the rabbinate. My father said he wanted me to be a scholar of the Talmud, but he wanted me to make my living in science.

Norman Lamm

#29. In the Jewish Quarter [Judengasse] was I born and educated; until my fifteenth year, they tried to beat the Talmud into me. My teachers were inhuman beings [Unmenschen], my colleagues were bad company, inducing me to secret sin; my body was frail, my spirit raw.

Moses Hess

#30. CODE:
Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Tanakh (JPS, Genesis 3:17)
DECODED:
Blessed is He that discerneth secrets.
Talmud (Berakoth 58a)

H.W. Charles

#31. The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.

Elie Wiesel

#32. The Talmud: Heart's Blood of the Jewish Faith ...

Herman Wouk

#33. In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

Elie Wiesel

#34. Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow." - The Talmud

Sapphire.

#35. The yeshiva where I studied considers itself modern Orthodox, not ultra-Orthodox. We followed a rigorous secular curriculum alongside traditional Talmud and Bible study.

Noah Feldman

#36. Jews seek to cleave to the will of God as set forth in the Bible and, particularly, the Pentateuch, with its rabbinic commentaries, the Mishnah and Talmud.

Meir Soloveichik

#37. The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law.

Herman Wouk

#38. I argue that the Talmud is about the constant struggle to understand.

Arthur Hertzberg

#39. It's the side-by-side culture of the Talmud I like so much. 'On the one hand' and 'on the other hand' is frustrating for people seeking absolute faith, but for me it gives religion an ambidextrous quality that suits my temperament.

Jonathan Rosen

#40. The Jews invented a portable religion in the shape of the Bible, the Torah, and eventually the Talmud, and with other portable forms of writing. So it's now possible to carry the religion, that is embedded in that writing, away from the ruins of political and military power.

Simon Schama

#41. The Talmud says 'When a man faces his Maker, he will have to account for those pleasures of life he failed to experience.' That's one part of the Talmud I know and the one part I agree with entirely.

Judith Krantz

#42. I wanted to write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration, about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness.

Elie Wiesel

#43. I never turn down a drink. Among friend's it's always appropriate. A man is only a man as they say but brandy is still brandy. You'll find that in the Talmud too.

Sholem Aleichem

#44. You don't see things as they are. You see things as you are. -- Talmud

Jennifer P. Schneider

#45. If a man without a woman, as it says in a passage in the Talmud dear to the heart of Kafka, is not a man, then it is Amshel who became a man, even though on the point of death, but it is Franz who narrates this odyssey and teaches us how to become Amshel, how to become a man.

Claudio Magris

#46. It is written in the Jewish law book, the Talmud, that only the Jew is human, that Gentiles are only animals.

Julius Streicher

#47. Albert Einstein had Max Talmud, his first mentor. It was Max who introduced a ten-year-old Einstein to key texts in math, science, and philosophy. Max took one meal a week with the Einstein family for six years while guiding young Albert. No one is self-made.

Gary Keller

#48. Where was this written? I wondered. Where in the Talmud or the Koran or the Bible did it say, "Lo, and Satan fetcheth the coffee for the Antichrist and her minions"?

Lyda Morehouse

#49. Why do you weep? Have I taken anything of yours? Only what was mine did I take.

The Talmud

#50. All is in the hands of God, except the fear of God ...

The Talmud

#51. Say little and do much, and receive all men with a cheerful countenance

The Talmud