Top 267 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Rabbis - Page 4

The circumstances of your life have uniquely qualified you to make a contribution. And if you don't make that contribution, nobody else can make it.

The pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.

To Israel's faithful hosts in the past, as to its loyal sons and daughters of the present, the Siddur has been the gate to communion with their Father in Heaven; and, at the same time, it has been a mighty spiritual bond that unites them to their scattered brethren the world over.

One glorious chain of love, of giving and receiving, unites all creatures.

When the spirit shines, even foggy skies make pleasant light.

There is no spirituality without ethics

In spite of the pangs of travail, the longing for motherhood remains the most powerful instinct in woman.

Those humble but indomitable workers, to whom later generations referred by the collective name of Baale Masorah, Masters of Tradition, performed in obscurity their Herculean task of guarding the Biblical Text against loss or variation.

... what counts in life usually cannot be counted.

Sabbath rest is more than mere abstention from physical work; and, therefore, must include worship and Scripture-reading.

Not indolence but congenial work is man's Divinely allotted portion.

People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles. But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. Their prayers help them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage that were not available to them before.

In Kabbalah, as in the Hassidic tradition, you cure the body, but you fix the soul. Curing takes time, but fixing, if you know how to do it, is immediate.

None of us has the power to make someone else love us. But we all have the power to give away love, to love other people. And if we do so, we change the kind of world we live in.

Once you admit a lie or a slander into your ears, you can never totally rid yourself of its effects.

One wears one's mind out in study, and yet has more mind with which to study. One gives away one's heart in love and yet has more heart to give away. One perishes out of pity for a suffering world, and is stronger therefore. So, too, it is possible at one and the same time to hold on to life and let go.

We are great and our faults are great and therefore our problems great and great are our consolations.

Living creatures possess a moving soul and a certain spiritual superiority which in this respect make them similar to those who possess intellect (people) and they have the power of affecting their welfare and their food and they flee from pain and death.

In Judaism social action is religiousness, and religiousness implies social action.

To pull a friend out of the mire, don't hesitate to get dirty.

The father is the sun, the mother is the moon and the light they mutually shed on their kids makes them bright stars against a very dark night.

I am appalled by the great injustice being perpetrated by those Jewish organizations that engage in anti-Christian bigotry.

Unless we believe that God renews creation every day, our prayers grow habitual and tedious.

The more the Jew is a Jew, the more universalist will his views and aspirations be, the less aloof will he be from anything that is noble and good, true and upright, in art or science, in culture or education; the more joyfully will he applaud whenever he sees truth and justice and peace and the ennoblement of man prevail and become dominant in human society.

To be a successful businessman, you must have remarkable talents; and if you have such talents, why waste them on business?

Everything in the Universe was as the Creator willed it - nothing superfluous, nothing lacking - a harmony.

Writing is one of the easiest things: erasing is one of the hardest.

There is no one so lonely than a man who loves only himself.

Because dying for God is a higher pleasure... than living without Him.

Honesty is the precondition for genuine scientific and scholarly work.

Only recently has part of America challenged the long-held assumption that America is a Christian nation. Most citizens do not recognize just how quickly we have moved in an anti-Christian direction.

If the Bible didn't show us the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, the sins of our heroes, we might have deep questions about their true virtue.

No amount of money given in charity, nothing but the abandonment of this hateful trade, can atone for this great sin against God, Israel and Humanity.

The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).

Christians in this country have found themselves under selective assault. God has, almost overnight, been removed from the educational, legal, and political institutions of the country.

The sign of a great man is that the closer you get, the greater he seems.

Disaster comes only because of ignorance.

The progress of dynamic ideals will not be eternally blocked. Through general, moral and intellectual advancement... shall the latent aspiration of justice for the animal kingdom come out into the open, when the time is ripe.

For the curse of Cain, the curse of being an outcast and a wanderer over the face of the earth has been removed.

The Second Temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred. Perhaps the Third will be rebuilt because of causeless love.

We are here to change the world with small acts of thoughtfulness done daily rather than with one great breakthrough.

They engage in activities aimed at bringing them [clients] to Jesus. That's fine, but it shouldn't be done with government money.

Our tolerance for forms of religious expression we disagree with is a precise barometer of our own spiritual security.

Indifference to one's own faith is no proof of tolerance. Loyalty to one's own is part of a larger loyalty to faith generally.

In all "benedictions", be they expressing plea or thanksgiving, we affirm that God is the "source" of every bounty we enjoy and of every favour we seek.

The only thing truly within our power, may be whether or not we will behave in each moment with arrogance or reverence.

Man's most sacred privilege is freedom of will, the ability to obey or disobey his Maker.

When one looks truly at the good side of everyone, others come to love him very naturally, and he does not need even a speck of flattery.

Value is shifting from those that produce the content, to those that deliver the experience of consuming it.

How can our leaders be so hypersensitive to the most microscopic of perceived anti-Jewish slurs, yet so entirely indifferent to flagrant and vicious anti-Christian insults?

The human heart in its perversity finds it hard to escape hatred and revenge.

Whenever feeling downcast, each person should vitally remember, "For my sake, the entire world was created."

There is evil in the world, but it can be overcome through repentance ­and aspiration, and therein lies the true meaning and adventure of life.

People should allow themselves the opportunity to really know what the unity of God means. To grasp a part of the nondivisible union is to grasp the whole.

The more that things change, the more we need to depend upon those things that never change.

Religion is a more or less organized way of remembering that every ministry points to a higher reality.

Pleasures are manifestations of God's name.

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Why? Because every human being has a root in the Unity, and to reject the minutest particle of the Unity is to reject it all.

Spirituality is like a bird: If you hold it too closely, it chokes, And if you hold it too loosely, it escapes.

Everyone carries with them at least one piece to someone else's puzzle.