Isaac Leib Peretz (1852 – 1915)
Polish-born author and poet who is counted among the three great classical writers in the Yiddish language.
Human lips are now forbidden to utter His name, for being the only God, He needs no name.
In this world it is very dangerous to be weak.
He who provides life provides also a living.
Ugliness is the greatest of all sins.
In the hands of the Jew, the reddest of all flags has been placed forcibly, and he has been told: "Go, go on and on, with all the liberators, with all fighters for a better tomorrow, with all destroyers of Sodoms. But never may you rest with them.... Pay everywhere the bloodiest costs of liberation, but be unnamed in all emancipation proclamations, or be rarely and scarcely mentioned."... The people cursed and blessed to be the last of the redeemed, to be eternally bleeding, the highest soaring expression of the divine in life.
It is not only individuals—peoples too cannot live merely for themselves. The whole world must be redeemed.
We are like fish
In this vast sea.
And Satan fishes
For you and me.
There are melodies that must have words... and melodies that sing themselves without words. The latter are of a higher grade. But these, too, depend on a voice and lips,... hence are not yet altogether pure, not yet genuine spirit. Genuine melody sings itself without a voice. It sings inside, within the heart, in man's very entrails!
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.
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!
Time is change, transformation, evolution. Time is eternal sprouting, blossoming, the eternal tomorrow.
To be of the eternal, you must be of the earth.
We take a drink only for the sake of the benediction.
Youth is fair, a graceful stag,
Leaping, playing in a park.
Age is gray, a toothless hag,
Stumbling in the dark.
The song that from the heart would spring
Is dead for want of echoing.
[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.
[About the diaspora] Canaan is too small for God's children. The Land of Israel will spread through all lands!
A heap of bricks is not yet a house.
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.
[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.