Israel Zangwill Quotes

Israel Zangwill offers bold reflections on history, identity, and culture that feel grand and provocative.

30 quotes

1. No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man.

2. Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan - spoiled.

3. No... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you-he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.

4. America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!

5. Oh, for the simple life, For tents and starry skies!

6. An Edward's England spat us out - a band Foredoomed to redden Vistula or Rhine, And leaf-like toss with every wind malign. All mocked the faith they could not understand.

7. How full and rich a world Theirs to inhabit is- Sweet scent of grass and bloom, Playmates' glad symphony, Cool touch of western wind, Sunshine's divine caress. How should they know or feel They are in darkness? But, oh, the miracle! If a Redeemer came, Laid finger on their eyes- One touch and what a world, New-born in loveliness!

8. What a dark world-who knows?- Ours to inhabit is! One touch and what a strange Glory might burst on us, What a hid universe!

9. Yehuda he-Hasid

10. Yom Tov of Joigny

11. The law of dislike for the unlike will always prevail. And whereas the unlike is normally situated at a safe distance, the Jews bring the unlike into the heart of every milieu, and must there defend a frontier line as large as the world.

12. A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.

13. Take from me the hope that I can change the future and you will send me mad.

14. The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it.

15. The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.

16. What clinical lectures I will give in heaven, demonstrating the ignorance of doctors!

17. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.

18. There are three reasons why men of genius have long hair. One is, that they forget it is growing. The second is, that they like it. The third is, that it comes cheaper; they wear it long for the same reason they wear their hats long.

19. Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts struggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these categories.

20. There never was such an age in which so many people were able to write badly.

21. In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of the grand passion than of a grand opera.

22. Let us start a new religion with one commandment, "Enjoy thyself.

23. I hate French poetry. What measured glitter!

24. [T]he German censorship forbade or mutilated my every book, which was like sticking pins into my soul...

25. In the din and tumult of the age, the still small voice of Jerusalem remains our only music.

26. You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. But if you are content to be something, you may by analogy be many things.

27. New York is the great stone desert.

28. There never was an age in which so many people were able to write badly.

29. Dead men hear no tales; posthumous fame is an Irish bull.

30. The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.