Isaac Bashevis Singer famous quotes

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

#Positivity #Miracle #Effort

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.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Men #Giving #Praying

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Life #Writing #Literature

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.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Children #Believe #Book

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Environmental #Vegetarian #Vegan

If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Vegetarianism #Voice #Wells

Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Religious #Earth #Sparks

There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Men #Animal #Gun

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.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Animal #Practice #Vegetarianism

If we have people with the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#People #Stories #Reader

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Mean

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

#Thinking #Acting #Action

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Men #Animal #Racist

We must believe in free will, we have no choice.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Believe #Choices #Free Will

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.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Men #Animal Rights #Vegan

When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, "I'm against vegetarianism!" I would say, "Well, I am for it!" This is how strongly I feel in this regard.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Men #Animal #Voice

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

#Inspirational #Kindness #Two

When a writer tries to explain too much, he's out of time before he begins.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Writing #Trying #Too Much

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

#Dark #Night #Mercy

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.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Men #Animal #People

There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Animal #Long #World

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Motivational #Nature #Animal

In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Eye #Self #Mad

We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Moving #Fighting #Fate

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Religious #Atheist #Fear

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Art #Unique #Greatness

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Art #Creativity #Expression

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Change

There is no death. How can there be death if everything is part of the Godhead? The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Soul #Alive #Body

I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Ideas #Thankfulness #Stories

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Life #Writing #Thinking

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Liars #Lying #Writing

Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Love #Life #Men

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Writing #Stories #Literature

Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Kindness #Generosity

Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Children #Book #Writing

To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Strong #Thinking #Vegetarianism

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.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Compassion #Blood #Long

What a strange power there is in clothing.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Fashion #Strange #Clothings

Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Justice #Together #Slaughter

I know as a writer how valuable a tool is the wastebasket. Perhaps God throws away many experiments before He finds the right expression. Perhaps we are the discards - or we could be the part He keeps. This mystery is what keeps us all going, to see what happens in the next chapter.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Expression #Tools #Next

From borrowing one gets poorer and from work one gets richer.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Money #Wealth #Get Rich

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Children #Writing #Parent

While facts never become obsolete or stale, commentaries always do.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Facts #Obsolete #Stale

Those who run around with women don't walk tightropes. They find it hard enough to crawl on the ground.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Running #Women #Enough

You must believe in free will; there is no choice.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Believe #Choices #Belief

The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Country #Book #Years

If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet... [at least for your own situation. Blind optimism is just as foolish. The solution is a rigorously balanced, rational outlook.]
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Optimism #Chance #Anticipation

When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Animal #Justice #Hunger

There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Wise #Gratitude #Humble

In many ways, astrology, numerology and palmistry are corruptions of the occult because they have attempted to make a practice out of something that is essentially imaginative.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Practice #Astrology #Numerology

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Character #Logic

They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Believe #Angel #Stuff

When we're trying to decide whether a leader is a good leader or a bad one, the question to ask is: 'Is he with the Ten Commandments or is he against them?' Then you can determine if the leader is a true messiah or another Stalin.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer

#Leader #Trying #Determine