Quotes from S.Y. Agnon

He longed for it to be winter. A cold wind would blow, the sea would pound, and he would rise cheerful and fit from a delicious sleep beneath warm blankets. Then would come days in which he would write his great novel. The kettle would boil and hot coffee would froth in his cup. In the garden the citron would flower beneath a brilliant moon, its branches dripping fragrance. The starry sky would sweeten the soft silence and Hemdat would pour the dew of his soul into the sea-blue night.

Zealots in the Land of Israel shriek that we ought to do unto Germany as it has done to us-- that, just as Germany has issued a ban on Jewish books, so should we ban all German books, without recognizing or realizing that whoever deprives himself of intellectual discourse jeopardizes his own soul.

He took the cigar out of his mouth and said, "Those people had God in their hearts." I said to him in a whisper, "God exists now too." "But not within us," he said. I said to him: "A certain hasidic master was asked where the Holy One, blessed be He, dwells. He told them: Wherever He is allowed to enter, there He dwells.

But after they had prayed they could not eat anything because the sea water had spoiled their food. The Holy One, blessed be He, salted the Leviathan for the end of days when it will be eaten, and the sea has been left full of salt.

This is in line with what the Yalkut notes: when King David finished composing the Book of Psalms, he boasted to the Holy One, blessed be He, "Master of the Universe! Is there anything in the world that lifts up its voice in song like me?"—upon which a frog appeared before him and said, "Do not be so proud of yourself. I sing more than you do.

That is what makes us love beautiful things: they have a perennial appeal, and hearing about them a second and third time can be even better than the first. The first time you hear it but not all of it. When you hear it again you savor every detail. Thus, when Avraham David spoke about our Master, the distinguished Av Beit Din, he would go on and on about things we already knew, but both the speaker and the listener felt as if they were only now hearing the real gist of it for the first time.

As night falls the city extricates itself from the work of the day and the stars prepare to come out. These were not the stars I was used to in the skies of my town and in the Land of Israel, but they are stars nevertheless. I'm grateful to them because even in a strange land they console me.

I wanted to say something as a man does who suddenly finds himself in a quiet place but I said nothing, like a man who suddenly finds himself in a quiet place and also keeps quiet.

All my life I have generally avoided my neighbors. If I happen to encounter one of them I immediately move somewhere else.

Tears won't saturate the dead and weeping will not raise him from his grave, if he has one. We should do for the living what we are unable to do for the dead.

You haven't been conscripted and I have to delay my return home so I'll stay with you while you tell me about these good people you've seen. One doesn't encounter good people every day and people don't see the good in others. You are blessed, Mr. Jakob, that God has brought good people to you and that you have discovered them to be good.

He used to say, 'Do, and expect nothing.' And since he did, his deeds combined to make a substantial reality. For such is the way of deeds: if a man does one thing today and another tomorrow, in the course of time they combine into a great deed.

The moonlight returned and brightened. The Dead Sea shone like a barrel of oil, sparks of light shot out from it illuminating the mountainsides, and from the mountains one could see bonfires. Since I was sad, I thought of things that make one even sadder.

In other countries, the bureaucracy serves the needs of the people and the state; here, the bureaucracy itself is primary, and it takes precedence over the needs of the people and the state.

I sat silent before the book, and the book unsealed its lips and revealed to me things I had never heard before. When I was tired of studying I thought many thoughts, and this is one of them: Many generations ago a wise man wrote a book and he did not know of this man who sits here, but in the end all his words prove to be meant for him.