Itzhak Peretz Quotes

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.

[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.

Many refined people will not kill a fly, but eat an ox.

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!

[Christianity] is a denial of this world, a severance from reality, an abdication, a means of redemption from, not for, life.

Prayer sometimes dulls the hunger of the pauper, like a mother's finger thrust into the mouth of her starving baby.

The voice is on the borderline between the physical and the spiritual.

We take a drink only for the sake of the benediction.

Jews are likened to sand: tiny grains, dry and scattered, each separate from the other.

[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.

A letter depends on how you read it, a melody on how you sing it.

I am a rainworm, buried deep
Among the oozing, slimy things,
Yet of an eagle's nest I dream,
And eagle's wings.

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.

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.

In this world it is very dangerous to be weak.