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Isaac Leib Peretz Quotes
1852–1915 Poland
Isaac Leib Peretz (May 18 1852 – April 3 1915) was a Polish-born author and poet who is counted among the three great classical writers in the Yiddish language.
Also known as: I. L. Peretz, Peretz, I. L., Peretz, Isaac Leib
Random Isaac Leib Peretz quote
58 quotes
[Christianity] is a denial of this world, a severance from reality, an abdication, a means of redemption from, not for, life.
I want to soar the boundless blue
We are like fish
Ugliness is the greatest of all sins.
A stranger's rose is but a thorn.
We are more than a people.... We are of a pure blood.
Not all Hasidim are hasidim.
A Jew waits for Messiah to come and redeem the world from fear and pain, from the cataclysmic conflicts between rich and poor. All shall enjoy the earth. This means, in popular imagination, that bread and clothes shall grow, ready-made, on trees. Do you have more winged ideals?
[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.
Little houses in a row,
I fear you. As victors, you may become the bureaucracy: doling out to each his bit as in a poorhouse, assigning to each his task as in a prison. And you will exterminate the creator of new worlds,—the free human will, and stop up the purest well of human happiness—the power of the one to face thousands, to stand up to peoples and generations.
[About the diaspora] Canaan is too small for God's children. The Land of Israel will spread through all lands!
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.
Children... constitute man's eternity.
The ancient Greeks and Romans tell of a golden age in the past.... Our Messiah alone belongs to the future. He still has to make his appearance, and not solely for the benefit of his own people. The whole world must be judged and redeemed.
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.
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.
Man has been likened to an earthen pot.... You have but to tap the pot with your finger. If it rings back full and true, all is well; there is your perfect pot. And if not—man, alas, has been likened to a broken potsherd.
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