Isaac Leib Peretz (1852 – 1915)
Polish-born author and poet who is counted among the three great classical writers in the Yiddish language.
Prosperity may be found in small as in big business.
Purim is the birthday of the first Schutz-Jude, the first Jewish toady to foreign royalty.
Children... constitute man's eternity.
I am a rainworm, buried deep
Among the oozing, slimy things,
Yet of an eagle's nest I dream,
And eagle's wings.
If the husband sits on a chair in the Garden of Eden, his wife is his footstool.
[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.
We are more than a people.... We are of a pure blood.
Not all Hasidim are hasidim.
"For the commandment is a lamp" [Prov. 6.23]. And the spark which kindles the commandment is devotion.
The soul is imprisoned in the body, and the Lord... built two windows in the wall of the prison... Unfortunately, the windows have curtains—eyelids; and a man whose soul is impure, feeling himself scrutinized, lets down the curtains and conceals the soul.
A letter depends on how you read it, a melody on how you sing it.
[Christianity] is a denial of this world, a severance from reality, an abdication, a means of redemption from, not for, life.
Don't look up to heaven, for what will you see in the sky, except stars, luminous but cold, wholly insensitive to pity?
At the Throne of Glory it is not the nobly-born that are beloved, but the nobly-risen.
Rather a stone, but to be alone!
One God, one Law, one people, and one land.
"May all unite to do Thy will with a perfect heart!"... Thus prays the Jew. Have you more beautiful prayers to offer?
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.
In the second and third exiles we have served as a living protest against greed and hate, against physical force, against "might makes right"!
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.