Shmuel Yosef Agnon Quotes
After all my possessions had been burned, God gave me the wisdom to return to Jerusalem.
If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after.
Our days on earth are like a shadow, and the time of our affliction is the length of our days.
On everything you need to hear other people's opinions. It's the only way to do things. You ask a friend's advice and then between the two of you things somehow get clearer.
It is not enough for a man to dwell in the Land of Israel, he must also pray to be free.
But perhaps the truth newly discovered is itself only temporary and when new discoveries are made these truths too will be abandoned. But one truth remains for ever, and that is the search for truth.
Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.
People's talk and the stories they tell have been engraved on my heart, and some of them have flown into my pen.
I returned to Jerusalem, and it is by virtue of Jerusalem that I have written all that God has put into my heart and into my pen.
As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile.
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.
Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing.
I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel.
If we breathe the scent of goodly grass, the fragrance of spices, the aroma of good fruits, we pronounce a blessing over the pleasure.
If I am proud of anything, it is that I have been granted the privilege of living in the land which God promised our forefathers to give us, as it is written.
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.
I was five years old when I wrote my first song. It was out of longing for my father that I wrote it.
