Great Throughts Treasury

"It is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me."

"It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth."

"It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run."

"A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces."

"My days in the slums were pregnant with possibilities it only needed the ripeness of events to make them fruit forth in realities."

"As we moved along in a little procession, I was delighted with the illumination of the streets. So many lamps, and they burned until morning, my father said, and so people did not need to carry lanterns."

"A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run."

"Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history. Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul. I felt the pang, the fear, the wonder, and the joy of it. I can never forget, for I bear the scars. But I want to forget - sometimes I long to forget."

"I was at a most impressionable age when I was transplanted to the new soil. I was in that period when even normal children, undisturbed in their customary environment, begin to explore their own hearts, and endeavor to account for themselves and their world."

"His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day."

"In the evening of the first day my father conducted us to the public baths."

"If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be worshiped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them."

"The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school."

"On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles."

"No, the czar did not want us in the schools."

"Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth."

"One positive command he gave us: You shall love and honor your emperor. In every congregation a prayer must be said for the czar's health, or the chief of police would close the synagogue."

"The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces."

"There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred; and even the lucky ones had their troubles."

"We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful."

"You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses."

"You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose."

"The tongue am I of those who lived before me, as those that are to come will be the voice of my unspoken thoughts. And so who shall be applauded if the song be sweet, if the prophecy be true?"

"The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family."

"The czar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this and you shall not do that - till there was very little left that we might do, except pay tribute and die."

"The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them."

"The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness."