Gamla Synagogue Quotes & Sayings

Jewish history has been tragic to the Jews and no less tragic to the neighboring nations who have suffered them. Our major vice of old as of today is parasitism. We are a people of vultures living on the labor and good fortune of the rest of the world. — Samuel Roth

[My grandfather] returned to what he called 'studying.' He sat looking down at his lap, his left hand idle on the chair arm, his right scratching his head, his white hair gleaming in the lamplight. I knew that when he was studying he was thinking, but I did not know what about. Now I have aged into knowledge of what he thought about. He thought of his strength and endurance when he was young, his merriment and joy, and how his life's burdens had then grown upon him. He thought of that arc of country that centered upon Port William as he first had known it in the years just after the Civil War, and as it had changed, and as it had become; and how all that time, which would have seemed almost forever when he was a boy, now seemed hardly anytime at all. He thought of the people he remembered, now dead, and of those who had come and gone before his knowledge, and of those who would come after, and of his own place in that long procession. — Wendell Berry

She believed in her dream like a fabled virgin mother expecting a messiah. — C.J. Anderson

How many husbands and wives must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds! — William Peter Blatty

All knowing that goes beyond the immediate experience of the moment is a matter of faith. — Egon Friedell

When you dance, you measure distance as if it's a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us. — David Levithan

Children will always learn from us. If we are angry, abusive and violent ... how can we ever expect them to be peaceful? — Timothy Pina

The Holy Spirit makes us aware of our lack of holiness to stimulate us to deeper yearning and striving for holiness. But Satan will attempt to use the Holy Spirit's work to discourage us. — Jerry Bridges

What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force. Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical. We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory - which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation - which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force. — Jeanette Winterson

That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.'
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious. — Philip Pullman

I know everything except myself. — Francois Villon