Isaac Leib Peretz Quotes

Isaac Leib Peretz offers thoughtful reflections on history and identity.

13 quotes

1. A people's memory is history. A people without a history can grow neither wiser nor better.

2. Prosperity may be found in small as in big business.

3. [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.

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

5. Time is change, transformation, evolution.

6. [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.

7. 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.

8. To be of the eternal, you must be of the earth.

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

10. The worst dog gets the best bone.

11. A heap of bricks is not yet a house.

12. [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.

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