At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands. As I did not find work, I sought my livelihood elsewhere.

I am generally ashamed to walk out in new clothes. And why am I ashamed? Is it because I don't want to embarrass the others who don't have new things? Or perhaps because a new coat makes you stand out, and you seem to be clothes and nothing else.

When I first began to combine letters other than Hebrew, I read every book in German that came my way, and from these I certainly received according to the nature of my soul.

Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing.

At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands. As I did not find work, I sought my livelihood elsewhere.

I was five years old when I wrote my first song. It was out of longing for my father that I wrote it.

The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital.