There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.

It is not that I belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.

There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.

You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.

The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.