Quotes from Sholem Aleichem

Come to think of it—what are we going to do with our old cantor? We just got a new one, you know. We needed him like a hole in the head.

I just hate their guts. I can't stand those rich big-shots. Spiders and rich men! May God not punish me.

My girls. Girls aren't boys, you know. Boys go to school. But what do girls do? Girls are like a bunch of geese; they sit at home, eat, and wait to grow up.

It's nothing to sneeze at—a soup made out of gizzards

I'm her friend. What have I got against her? But on the other hand, she didn't do right by me.

But once—and whenever you hear but once, you know trouble's coming—something happened.

He was a follower of a Hasidic rebbe, a trustee in the synagogue, a big-shot with the authorities. In brief, a factotum.

Like they say: a pimple on a blister, a blister on a boil.

After all, I'm just a human being made out of flesh and blood, like they say. And, if misfortune is fated, is there any getting around it?

In a word, do I have to tell you what sort of breed lawyers are?

For instance, if the biblical Hebrew says: "And he said," the Aramaic says: "And he saith.

As I stood there thinking, I saw a general with as many medals as I got hair, sitting at a front table at the outdoor cafe on Fankonin.

Each Jew must either give or take tzedakah [charity] for Passover.

A wise word is not a substitute for a piece of herring.

No matter how bad things get, you've got to go on living, even if it kills you.

You see how it is, my dear friends. There's no pleasing everyone. It's hopeless to even try, and the more you play the peacemaker, the less peaceful things become.

When the heart is full it runs out of the eyes.

This is an ugly and mean world, and only to spite it we mustn't weep. If you want to know, this is the constant source of my good spirit, of my humor. Not to cry, out of spite, only to laugh out of spite, only to laugh.

And books -- she swallows like dumplings.

The worm in the radish doesn't think there is anything sweeter.

What eyes can tell you in a minute, a mouth will never say in a day.

There is nothing in the world, I tell you, so maddening as a person who doesn't answer when you abuse him. You shout and you scold, you are ready to burst a gut, and he stands there and smiles....

Like they say: you stew up your troubles and eat a hearty meal.

That's what I thought at the time. On second thought, perhaps I didn't really think at all.