Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything.

What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.

We must believe in free will - we have no choice.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.

Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.

In God's mill even chaff becomes flour.

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.

Men want all women to lie down as whores and get up as virgins.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.

Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark

Literature is the memory of humanity.

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.

No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him.