Elie Wiesel Quotes - Page 19

Quotes about:

• Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Opposites, Routine

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Writing, Biblical

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.4, Hill and Wang

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• If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Offering, Fellow Man

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Open Heart”, p.75, Schocken

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• I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

  Elie Wiesel

  Please Me, Deeds, Good Deeds

  Elie Wiesel (2013). “Souls on Fire”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Yiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, World, Firsts

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

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• Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.

  Elie Wiesel

  Humanity, Today, Concerned

  Elie Wiesel (1982). “Night”, New York, Bantam

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• I was working as a journalist for an Israeli paper in Paris, and my salary at the highest was fifty dollars a month. At the end of the month I always had palpitations; I didn't know how to pay my rent. Even after the war, I was often hungry. But that's part of the romantic condition of a student. To be a student in Paris and not be hungry is wrong.

  Elie Wiesel

  War, Paris, Paper

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.

  Elie Wiesel

  Education, Use, May

  Elie Wiesel (2013). “Souls on Fire”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists.

  Elie Wiesel

  Two, Giving, Fingers

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I remember when I heard the words "Biblical criticism" in my town, it was with disdain: "Biblical criticism? How dare you?".

  Elie Wiesel

  Biblical, Criticism, Towns

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• One day - I remember it was a Sabbath afternoon - I came to the synagogue with a book in my hand. I saw a commentary on the Bible by a certain Rabbi Moshe Dessauer, better known as Moses Mendelssohn. An elderly man came up to me - I was then maybe 10 or 12. "What are you studying?" he said. "Dessauer's commentaries," I said. So he gave me a slap on my face.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Men, Elderly

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• I was never without a book in my hand.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Hands

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• In Talmudic literature, certainly in the beginning, he was like a human being - except he was a serpent. But he was talking and walking and probably dreaming.

  Elie Wiesel

  Dream, Talking, Literature

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

  Elie Wiesel

  Eye, Night, Mirrors

  Elie Wiesel, Harry J. Cargas (1993). “Telling the tale: a tribute to Elie Wiesel on the occasion of his 65th birthday : essays, reflections, and poems”, Time Being Press

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• In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source—if not the cause—of all our misfortune.

  Elie Wiesel

  Eye, Men, Fire

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• In my town we studied the five Books of Moses, but rarely the prophets. We studied the Talmud so much that I sometimes knew the prophets because of the prophetic quotations in the Talmud. We almost never studied the prophets themselves.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Towns, Sometimes

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• Judaism is in a sense a Rabbinic, Talmudic religion, rather than a Biblical religion.

  Elie Wiesel

  Biblical, Judaism

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• The Bible is interpreted by the Talmud. Except, in Rabbinic tradition, a Talmudic law has the weight of the Biblical law. Sometimes we say in a prayer, "Blessed are Thou, O God, who has ordered us and commended us," to do something. But you don't find that "something" in the Bible; you find it in the Talmud. So Talmudic law becomes as important as Biblical law.

  Elie Wiesel

  Prayer, Blessed, Biblical

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.

  Elie Wiesel

  Action, Indifference, Danger

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.143, Macmillan

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• We've sort of agreed that the account of Adam and Eve is a story.

  Elie Wiesel

  Stories, Adam, Adam And Eve

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• What of the Exodus? That too, is a wonderful story, but from the viewpoint of an historian, it is - to use a word scholars love - problematic. Let's say there are doubts, to say the least, among many scholars, as to whether the Exodus actually occurred. That's a historical issue.

  Elie Wiesel

  Issues, Historical, Doubt

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• But because of his telling, many who did not believe have come to believe, and some who did not care have come to care. He tells the story, out of infinite pain, partly to honor the dead, but also to warn the living - to warn the living that it could happen again and that it must never happen again. Better than one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all. (vi)

  Elie Wiesel

  Pain, Believe, Heart

  Elie Wiesel (1960). “Night”, Bantam

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• Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?

  Elie Wiesel

  Art, Military, War

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• I became one of [Moses Mendelssohn] defenders. But then I heard the words "Biblical criticism" again. And, of course, afterward, I studied it more closely.

  Elie Wiesel

  Biblical, Criticism, Moses

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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• I developed an anger at [Moses] Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Moses, Mendelssohn

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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