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.

I belong to the tribe of Levi.

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.

A home from which you can be ejected at any time is no true home.

Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing. If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after. If we breathe the scent of goodly grass, the fragrance of spices, the aroma of good fruits, we pronounce a blessing over the pleasure. The same applies to pleasures of the sight. And the same applies to pleasures of the ear.

Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.