Quotes from Sholom Aleichem

Gossip is nature's telephone.

Ah, how many luxuries has the good God prepared for his Jewish children.

The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.

I will never permit myself to give in to American taste and lower the standards of art.

No one knows whom the shoe pinches - no one.

It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the 'L'ag Beomer.' They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war.

How does the saying go? "Earning less and sleeping well is earning best.

But it's as my mother, bless her, says: When a madman breaks a window, it's never his own….

You know what a clever woman my mother is. "What good," she says to me, "are all his promises of tablecloths and handkerchiefs when he should be sending you cash? The Angel of Death doesn't wait for a man to buy his shrouds…

Stay at home," says my mother, "and you won't wear out your boots!

As my mother says, there's no need to show the beaten dog a stick….

It seems there's no way of making a living in this world that I haven't tried. The one thing left is matchmaking.

You know what, Pan Sholem Aleichem? Let's talk about something more cheerful. Have you heard any news of the cholera in Odessa?

Matchmaking, for example. What could be finer, better, easier, more respectable? What does it take, after all? Nothing but a bit of common sense and enough brains to see who goes with who.

But you know what my mother says: "With the right kind of luck you can break your nose falling on grass …

As your mother would say, "If you're knee-deep in mud, keep on crawling.

But it's as my mother says: "If you want to learn how to grow cabbages, ask the gardener, not the goat.

The wise man blesses the whip that flogs him," says my mother.

But it's as my mother says: "When a girl can't dance, she blames the musicians …

I hope you and your partners have more luck than we have water in our river.

In short, things are going from bad to worse. But if you want peace and quiet, my mother says, you should look for it in the grave …

My brother-in-law—may my life be as long as his was short!—has died of the toothache. Of course, his health wasn't too good before that.

A drunk grows sober before a fool grows wise," says my mother, more health to her.

we'll start right in on the knishes, or the kreplach, or the knaidlach, or the varnishkes, or the pirogen, or the blintzes.