Quotes from Sholom Aleichem

Once the custom was for a bankrupt to leave town, but that's no longer in vogue. It's not even called bankruptcy any more. The expression is, "I'm in arrears." In plain language that means, "Kiss my rear.

licked his lips like a cat about to get a taste of the Pesach goosefat.

Second, I wish all my enemies would burst from the bellyful your last letter gave me.

In matchmaking, you should know, telegrams are half the battle.

My mother, bless her, had your number when she said, "Don't hold your breath waiting for him, because nothing good comes from a graveyard.

Daughter," said my mother, "always remember this prayer: Protect me, dear God, from a Berdichev tycoon, an Uman fanatic, a Mohilev skeptic, a Konstantin servant, a Kamenetz politician, and a Yehupetz rogue.

We helped ourselves to a drop of vishniak, had some more marmalade, and made small talk. What about? Don't ask me.

Money," says my mother, "can buy everything but a fever.

I only wanted to be good—the trouble is that being good gets you nowhere.

Then she gave him a few good smacks in the face. These he accepted like a philosopher.

An utshebe zavadyenye may be out of the question, but there's not a barishnye who wouldn't like to be znakome with Zola, Pushkin, or dazhe Gorky …" So she says to me, my beauty, half in Yiddish and half in Russian, although the Russian was more like two-thirds.

As my mother, God bless her, would say, "Bring the bread and I'll find the cutting knife …

Where were they coming from? From Zhmerinka, and from Kazatin, and from Razdyelne, and from Popelne, and from a few-other places that were equally famous for their roughnecks.

Better to wish yourself well than another ill," as my mother says.

It's no picnic, your Russian grammar; you have to mind your p's and q's.

It makes my heart ache to see people living such fine lives when I have to sit here like a widow in black, waiting to hear from my fine breadwinner

My mother says, "It's not brains or good looks that a person needs, it's luck.

They're a lovely couple—she doesn't mind his not being too bright and he doesn't mind her not looking so good. But beauty makes nothing good, my mother says. It's goodness that makes everything beautiful.

P.S. God never sends the illness without its cure.

We had a good scare in our town when they broke out, because we were afraid pogroms would come next.

The worse heartache," says my mother, "is the one you can't bare.

There were, it appeared, more ways to skin a Katz than one Ã¢â'¬Â¦

I've been drinking goat's milk and went to see the doctor. Quite a living they make from me, the doctors! They should all drop dead and take the pharmacist with them.

When there's bread," says my mother, "don't hanker after sweets.