Top 139 Quotes & Sayings by Isaac Bashevis Singer

We must believe in free will, we have no choice.

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.

I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.

We have to believe in free-will. We've got no choice.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.

The second half of the twentieth century is a complete flop.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't - it just keeps you from enjoying it.

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

Literature is the memory of humanity.

Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark

The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.

We are all God's creatures-that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.

When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.

Actually, the true story of a person's life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable.

No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.

Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.

In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.

God gave us so many emotions, and so many strong ones. Every human being, even if he is an idiot, is a millionaire in emotions.

What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

The more you see what other people do, the more you learn about yourself.

How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature.

Men want all women to lie down as whores and get up as virgins.

There is a permanent amnesia planted in us, which just as we keep forgetting our dreams, we sometimes keep on forgetting our reality.

I get up every morning with a desire to do some creative work. This desire is made of the same stuff as the sexual desire, the desire to make money, or any other desire.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

We must believe in free will - we have no choice.

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

There is a plan to this universe. There is a high intelligence, maybe even a purpose, but it's given to us on the installment plan.

Literature has neglected the old and their emotions. The novelists never told us that in love, as in other matters, the young are just beginners and that the art of loving matures with age and experience.

From borrowing one gets poorer and from work one gets richer.

All is foreseen but the choice is given.

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything.

But if we have people who have the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.

Various philosophers and religious leaders tried to convince their disciples and followers that animals are nothing more than machines without a soul, without feelings. However, anyone who has ever lived with an animal-be it a dog, a bird, or even a mouse-knows that this theory is a brazen lie, invented to justify cruelty.