“People look with sympathetic eyes only at the blossom and the fruit, and disregard the long period of transition during which the one is ripening into the other.”

The silver-leaved birch retains in its old age a soft bark; there are some such men.

Liberty is from God; liberties, from the devil.

With hat in hand, one gets on in the world.

The world is the same everywhere.

Discontent is the source of all trouble,but also of all progress, in individuals and nations.

We consider it tedious to talk of the weather, and yet there is nothing more important.

Being alone when one’s belief is firm, is not to be alone.

What will people say-in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere.

Years teach us more than books.

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

If you sound great in the practice room, you’re practicing the wrong thing. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.

No mortal eye has ever fully seen a flash of lightning … for no matter how firmly we look, our eyes are sure to be dazzled.

Some men, like modern shops, hang everything in their show windows; when one goes inside, nothing is to be found.

Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions.