Isaac Leib Peretz Quotes

45 Sourced Quotes

[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.

Isaac Leib Peretz
I am a rainworm, buried deep
Among the oozing, slimy things,
Yet of an eagle's nest I dream,
And eagle's wings.

Isaac Leib Peretz
A Jew waits for Messiah to come and redeem the world from fear and pain, from the cataclysmic conflicts between rich and poor. All shall enjoy the earth. This means, in popular imagination, that bread and clothes shall grow, ready-made, on trees. Do you have more winged ideals?

Isaac Leib Peretz
I want to soar the boundless blue
Where winds and tempests have their birth,
And let the clouds conceal for me
Not heaven, but the earth.

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.

Isaac Leib Peretz
Little houses in a row,
Down a quiet lane;
Neither doors nor windows know,
Peace and darkness reign.
Though you cannot pay the rent,
You will dwell there with the best.
Where the weary, broken, spent,
Find eternal rest!

Isaac Leib Peretz
"May all unite to do Thy will with a perfect heart!"… Thus prays the Jew. Have you more beautiful prayers to offer?

Isaac Leib Peretz
[About loyalty to Judaism] Don't assume, Jewish intellectuals, that you are doing your duty by working... for so-called Humanity.... You are lighting a fire beneath the open sky, while your own family in your own house is freezing.

Isaac Leib Peretz
It is not only individuals—peoples too cannot live merely for themselves. The whole world must be redeemed.

Isaac Leib Peretz
We are more than a people.... We are of a pure blood.

Isaac Leib Peretz
Jews are likened to sand: tiny grains, dry and scattered, each separate from the other.

Isaac Leib Peretz
Human lips are now forbidden to utter His name, for being the only God, He needs no name.

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.

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.

Isaac Leib Peretz
The voice is on the borderline between the physical and the spiritual.

Isaac Leib Peretz
We should get out of the ghetto, but we should get out as Jews, with our own spiritual treasures. We should interchange, give and take, but not beg. Ghetto is impotence. Cultural cross-fertilization is the only possibility for human development.

Isaac Leib Peretz
"For the commandment is a lamp" [Prov. 6.23]. And the spark which kindles the commandment is devotion.

Isaac Leib Peretz
With the same bricks one may erect... a palace or a prison.... The same letters are used in Holy Writ and heretical works.

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"!

Isaac Leib Peretz
Youth is fair, a graceful stag,
Leaping, playing in a park.
Age is gray, a toothless hag,
Stumbling in the dark.

Isaac Leib Peretz
Nobody ever stubs his toe against a mountain. It's the little temptations that bring a man down.

Isaac Leib Peretz
Time is change, transformation, evolution. Time is eternal sprouting, blossoming, the eternal tomorrow.

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

Isaac Leib Peretz
The ancient Greeks and Romans tell of a golden age in the past.... Our Messiah alone belongs to the future. He still has to make his appearance, and not solely for the benefit of his own people. The whole world must be judged and redeemed.

Isaac Leib Peretz
You are the weakest and the least, and the last to be redeemed.... You will be freed, when man will rise above the earthly, when human worms will turn into human eagles.

Isaac Leib Peretz
If the husband sits on a chair in the Garden of Eden, his wife is his footstool.

Isaac Leib Peretz
Prosperity may be found in small as in big business.

Isaac Leib Peretz
The Hebrew language... is the only glue which holds together our scattered bones. It also holds together the rings in the chain of time.... It binds us to those who built pyramids, to those who shed their blood on the ramparts of Jerusalem, and to those who, at the burning stakes, cried Shema Yisrael!

Isaac Leib Peretz
They are all so-called Christian nations, but... this superimposed religion... does not penetrate into the core of their souls. It has no relation to their daily experience... It is a key to open a heaven after death and not a key with which to force open the portals of this life.

Isaac Leib Peretz
A letter depends on how you read it, a melody on how you sing it.

Isaac Leib Peretz