Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be.
Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger.
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.
If you feel that you are good, don't be too proud of it.
Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart.
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.