Sholem Asch Quotations

The sword conquered for a while, but the spirit conquers for ever!

An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision.

The lash may force men to physical labor, it cannot force them to spiritual creativity.

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.

Heritage is Scriptures . . . which have become absorbed into our blood.

Without a love of humankind there is no love of God.

Jesus Christ is the outstanding personality of our time. Every act and word of Jesus has value for us. He became the light of the world. Why shouldn't I, a Jew, be proud of that?

I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.

Through our soul is our contact with heaven.

God does not seek to destroy the evil nations, but their evil.

Now, more than any time previous in human history, we must arm ourselves with an ethical code so that each of us will be aware that he is protecting the moral merchandise absent of which life is not worth living.

Humankind's ladder to God is a ladder of deeds.

The heathen spirit is wingless. It cannot lift itself to heights from which the totality of being is visible, and it therefore loses itself in details.

Personality is the gland of creativity.

If my only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.

Every dawn renews the Beginning, and to behold the earth struggling out of the formless void, out of the night, is to witness the act of creation.

The best security for old age: respect your children.

Jesus Christ is to me the outstanding personality of all time, all history, both as Son of God and as Son of Man. Everything he ever said or did has value for us today and that is something you can say of no other man, dead or alive. There is no easy middle ground to stroll upon. You either accept Jesus or reject him.

Youth has the resilience to absorb disaster and weave it into the pattern of its life, no mater how anguishing the thorn that penetrates its flesh.