Hubel And Wiesel Quotes

My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith. ~ Elie Wiesel

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings
his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again ... When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse. ~ Elie Wiesel

I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple. ~ Elie Wiesel

Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing. ~ Elie Wiesel

You mustn't forget laughter either. Do you know what laughter is? It's God's mistake. When God made man in order to bend him to his wishes he carelessly gave him the gift of laughter. Little did he know that later that earthworm would use it as a weapon of vengeance. When he found out, there was nothing he could do; it was too late to take back the gift. And yet he tried his best. He drove man out of paradise, invented an infinite variety of sins and punishments, and made him conscious of his own nothingness, all in order to prevent him from laughing. But, as I say, it was too late. God made a mistake before man made his. What they have in common is that they are both irreparable. ~ Elie Wiesel

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else. ~ Elie Wiesel

I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Jiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent. ~ Elie Wiesel

My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed. ~ Elie Wiesel

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. ~ Elie Wiesel

Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life. ~ Elie Wiesel

Watchman, what of the night? So many victims in so many places need help. We need, above all, to be shaken out of our indifference - the greatest source of danger in the world.
For, remember: the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. The opposite of faith is not arrogance by indifference; the opposite of culture is not ignorance but indifference; the opposite of art is not ugliness but indifference. And the opposite of peace is indifference to both peace and war - indifference to hunger and persecution, to imprisonment and humiliation, indifference to torture and persecution. ~ Elie Wiesel

We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39) ~ Elie Wiesel

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer Neither is resignation Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment. ~ Elie Wiesel

Human beings all change. Not what they are but who they are. We have the power to change what we do with our life and turn it into our destiny. ~ Elie Wiesel

One day when we came to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest... Years later, I witnessed a similar spectacle in Aden. Out ship's passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the "natives," who dove to retrieve them. An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game. When I noticed two children desperately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other, I implored the lady, 'Please don't throw any more coins!' 'Why not?' said she. 'I like to give charity... ~ Elie Wiesel

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages, which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don't see them. ~ Elie Wiesel

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die. ~ Elie Wiesel

There is divine beauty in learning ... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you. ~ Elie Wiesel

If God exists, how can we lay claim to freedom, since He is its beginning and its end? ~ Elie Wiesel

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. ~ Elie Wiesel

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe. ~ Elie Wiesel

Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended. ~ Elie Wiesel

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark. ~ Elie Wiesel

I cannot cure everybody. I cannot help everybody. But to tell the lonely person that I am not far or different from that lonely person, that I am with him or her, that's all I think we can do and we should do. ~ Elie Wiesel

It is in man that God must be loved, because the love of God goes through the love of man. Whoever loves God exclusively, namely excluding man, reduces his love and his God to the level of abstraction. Beshtian Hasidism denies all abstraction. ~ Elie Wiesel

When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists. ~ Elie Wiesel

[Moishe] explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer ...
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. ~ Elie Wiesel

The only place where I felt at home, on familiar ground, was the Jewish cemetery. And yet I had never set foot in it before. Children had been forbidden to enter. ~ Elie Wiesel

All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek's soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. ~ Elie Wiesel

Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have lost too many sons and daughters and have shed too much blood. This must stop, and all attempts to stop it must be encouraged. ~ Elie Wiesel

Hunger is isolating; it may not and cannot be experienced vicariously. He who never felt hunger can never know its real effects, both tangible and intangible. Hunger defies imagination; it even defies memory. Hunger is felt only in the present. ~ Elie Wiesel

The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it. ~ Elie Wiesel

Memory feeds a culture, nourishes hope and makes a human, human. ~ Elie Wiesel