Quotes from Sholem Aleichem

She's not my first wife, you know, but my third. And a third wife, they say, is like the December sun.

I told them that Karl Marx was a theory and that theories change. Today it was this theory, tomorrow that one. But Tolstoi was a great artist and art remains forever.

It was a grief about which you could not, must not, dare not speak.

A receipt is as strong as a thatched roof.

Bit by bit they slipped back into their old strange talk. Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari, Philosophy, Spinoza, and other such nonsense which went in one ear and out the other.

Shh, let me finish," Mama said, and banged her elbow into my ribs. "Remember, now. Neither small nor tight. A roomy waist and a pleat. For God's sake, a pleat.

When I tell a story, I tell it when I want to tell it, not when you want to hear it.

Of him they said the proverb had been invented: All good swimmers are drowned.

I'm a miller—unfortunately—I own a mill. That is, the mill owns me, for you know what they say. Once you're dragged into it, you're finished.

He's so butter-soft you can apply him to a third-degree burn.

I prescribed silver-chloride," he said. "Silver-chloride! So why are you skipping around like an idiot from one doctor to another?

You're just a young doctor! Where do you come off having a waiting line? If you continue this way, you hear, you're going to have troubles, not a practice.

You can be friendly with someone without being friends. And you can be close friends without being friendly. Anyway, that's my opinion. I'm not asking you what you think.

We both loved each other. But we never spoke of it. Kept it to ourselves. So passed our best years.

After all, we're blessed with doctors. I brought him two doctors. So they argued with each other. One said operate, the other said don't. Meanwhile, the patient died.

You'll ask: how can people understand one another without talking? Well that shows that you really know psychology. But not people!

Tell me yourself—rather than suffering because of daughters, as Tevye has, is it not a thousand times better to lie in the ground and bake bagels?

Folks say he's up to his neck in debts. He doesn't even own the hair on his head.

Like they say: suffer with your own. You get the picture? But complete strangers? Must I bear the brunt of their troubles? Have I deserved a fate like that? What wrong have I done?

Hello." "Hello yourself. Where you from?" "From hunger!

Lawyers and doctors were created for the specific purpose of contradicting each other. Whatever one says, the other must say just the opposite. They're just like the Aramaic translation of the Bible.

May my enemies, your enemies, and all enemies of the Jews have as many good years as we have profit out of dealing with hot Yiddish papers.

Like my grandma, may she rest in peace, used to say: "The best check is ready cash.

Like the matchmaker's commission, it was the sort of fee that had to be paid on the spot.