Abraham Cahan Quotations

If you study the Talmud you please God even more than you do by praying or fasting.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart.

I was a great dreamer of day dreams.

Remember that it is not enough to abstain from lying by word of mouth; for the worst lies are often conveyed by a false look, smile, or act.

If a man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs.

Only the other world has substance and reality; only good deeds and holy learning have tangible worth.

If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race.

Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be.

If you feel that you are good, don't be too proud of it.

The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from religious life.

The dearest days in one's life are those that seem very far and very near at once.

God, for example, appealed to me as a beardless man wearing a quilted silk cap; holiness was something burning, forbidding, something connected with fire while a day had the form of an oblong box.

You must never tire fighting Satan.

He considered the Rvolution a victroy for the Jews, which opinion, he said, prevailed on the East Side where rejoicing knew no bounds. We felt, added Mr. Cahan, that this is a great triumph for the Jews' cause. The anti-Jewish element in Russia has always been identified with the anti-revolutionary party. Jews having always sat high in the Councils of the revolutionists, all of our race became inseparably linked with the opponents of the government in the official mind.

Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger.

To say this sacred prayer [the Kaddish, prayer for the dead] for a Gentile is a most uncommon proceeding, but so unanimous and ardent is the feeling of the people of the New York ghetto in the present instance that Pres. William McKinley is spoken of in that quarter as "the loving brother of all of us," as one who "died a martyr to the freedom of Jew and Gentile.

What is wealth? A dream of fools.