Israel Zangwill Quotations

The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it.

No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man.

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.

America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!

You should examine yourself daily. If you find faults, you should correct them. When you find none, you should try even harder.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan - spoiled.

The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.

It takes two men to make one brother.

No, the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.

In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of the grand passion than of a grand opera.

No... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you / he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.

Until mankind heeds the message on the Hebrew trumpet blown, and the faith of the whole world's people is the faith that is our own.

Let us start a new religion with one commandment, "Enjoy thyself.

The law of dislike for the unlike will always prevail. And whereas the unlike is normally situated at a safe distance, the Jews bring the unlike into the heart of every milieu, and must there defend a frontier line as large as the world.

The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.

The Land of Israel needs a People and the People of Israel needs a Land.

Dead men hear no tales; posthumous fame is an Irish bull.

New York is the great stone desert.

There never was such an age in which so many people were able to write badly.

Editors are constantly on the watch to discover new talents in old names.

Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.

Everything changes but change

[T]he German censorship forbade or mutilated my every book, which was like sticking pins into my soul...

O God... make me a child again, even before I die; give me back the simple faith, the clear vision of the child that holds its father's hand.

What clinical lectures I will give in heaven, demonstrating the ignorance of doctors!

Selfishness is the only real atheism.

You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries...

How full and rich a world Theirs to inhabit is-- Sweet scent of grass and bloom, Playmates' glad symphony, Cool touch of western wind, Sunshine's divine caress. How should they know or feel They are in darkness? But, oh, the miracle! If a Redeemer came, Laid finger on their eyes-- One touch and what a world, New-born in loveliness!

...the wonderful poems interpreting with equal magic the romance of strange lands and times, or the modern soul, naked and unashamed, as if clothed in its own complexity; the humorous-tragic questionings of the universe; the delicious travel-pictures and fantasies; the lucid criticisms of art, and politics, and philosophy, informed with malicious wisdom, shimmering with poetry and wit.

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. But if you are content to be something, you may by analogy be many things.

I hate French poetry. What measured glitter!

There are three reasons why men of genius have long hair. One is, that they forget it is growing. The second is, that they like it. The third is, that it comes cheaper; they wear it long for the same reason they wear their hats long.

Take from me the hope that I can change the future and you will send me mad.

The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.

In the din and tumult of the age, the still small voice of Jerusalem remains our only music.

Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts struggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these categories.

As soon as you tolerate something, it becomes bearable, and before long it will become common.

The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.