Quotes about Reflection

A man who has suffered more than others, and differently, should live apart. Alone. Outside of any organized existence. He poisons the air. He makes it unfit for breathing. He takes away from joy its spontaneity and its justification. He kills hope and the will to live. He is the incarnation of time that negates present and future, only recognizing the harsh law of memory. He suffers and his contagious suffering calls forth echoes around him.

Everything had been said. The pros and the cons. I would choose the living or the dead. Day or night.

The lack of hate between executioner and victim, perhaps this is God.

Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand His replies. We cannot under-stand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and re-main there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself. And why do you pray, Moishe? I asked him. I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.

Never shall I forget these things, even if I'm condemned to live as long as God himself.

Our ethics are not meant to be created in our childhoods and shoved in a box somewhere; they must be reshaped daily, as we encounter scenarios that challenge our beliefs.

And throughout those evenings a conviction grew in me that [he] would draw me with him into eternity, into that time where question and answer would become one.

The rabbi comes in to read the Psalms with you and hear you say the Vidui, that terrible confession in which you admit your responsibility not only for the sins you have committed, whether by word, deed, or thought, but also for those you may have caused others to commit.

For memory is a blessing: it creates bonds rather than destroys them.

Suffering confers no privileges; it is what one does with suffering that matters.

One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

Why do you pray? he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?