50 Quotes by Israel Zangwill

Everything changes but change

[T]he German censorship forbade or mutilated my every book, which was like sticking pins into my soul...

O God... make me a child again, even before I die; give me back the simple faith, the clear vision of the child that holds its father's hand.

What clinical lectures I will give in heaven, demonstrating the ignorance of doctors!

Selfishness is the only real atheism.

You, the Spirit of the Settlement! ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries...

How full and rich a world Theirs to inhabit is-- Sweet scent of grass and bloom, Playmates' glad symphony, Cool touch of western wind, Sunshine's divine caress. How should they know or feel They are in darkness? But, oh, the miracle! If a Redeemer came, Laid finger on their eyes-- One touch and what a world, New-born in loveliness!

...the wonderful poems interpreting with equal magic the romance of strange lands and times, or the modern soul, naked and unashamed, as if clothed in its own complexity; the humorous-tragic questionings of the universe; the delicious travel-pictures and fantasies; the lucid criticisms of art, and politics, and philosophy, informed with malicious wisdom, shimmering with poetry and wit.

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. But if you are content to be something, you may by analogy be many things.