Isaac Leib Peretz (1852 – 1915)
Polish-born author and poet who is counted among the three great classical writers in the Yiddish language.
[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.
Children... constitute man's eternity.
[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.
If the husband sits on a chair in the Garden of Eden, his wife is his footstool.
I am a rainworm, buried deep
Among the oozing, slimy things,
Yet of an eagle's nest I dream,
And eagle's wings.
We are more than a people.... We are of a pure blood.
Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox.
The voice is on the borderline between the physical and the spiritual.
Nobody ever stubs his toe against a mountain. It's the little temptations that bring a man down.
A people's memory is history; and as a man without a memory, so a people without a history cannot grow wiser, better.
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!
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.
A heap of bricks is not yet a house.
[About the diaspora] Canaan is too small for God's children. The Land of Israel will spread through all lands!
[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.
The song that from the heart would spring
Is dead for want of echoing.
Youth is fair, a graceful stag,
Leaping, playing in a park.
Age is gray, a toothless hag,
Stumbling in the dark.
We take a drink only for the sake of the benediction.
To be of the eternal, you must be of the earth.
Time is change, transformation, evolution. Time is eternal sprouting, blossoming, the eternal tomorrow.