Enemies Quotes

“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies: A Love Story

“If you hear I'm dead, don't come to my funeral.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies: A Love Story

“At moments when Herman fantasized about a new metaphysics, or even a new religion, he based everything on the attraction of the sexes. In the beginning was lust. The godly, as well as the human, principle is desire. Gravity, light, magnetism, thought may be aspects of the same universal longing. Suffering, emptiness, darkness are nothing more than interruptions of a cosmic orgasm that grows forever in intensity...”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies: A Love Story

“In Russia, there was one cure for every illness—vodka.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“If men had their way, every woman would lie down a prostitute and get up a virgin.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“If one Hitler is dead, there are a million ready to take his place.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“إن الروح كالجسد يمكن أن تتلقى ضربات عديدة، ثم تتوقف عن الإحساس بالألم.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies: A Love Story

“The talk about culture and justice was more revolting than the barbarism and injustice.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Even eternity doesn’t last forever,”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Women had ruined him, but they had also showed him compassion.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“A restlessness peculiar to people who turn the night into day hung in the air.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Even a hungry audience is better than a deaf audience.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“The worst dog gets the best bone. Why is it?”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“A slit throat cannot be sewn together again.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“What use is my life to me? I envy the dead. All day I envy them. I can’t even earn my death.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“ten enemies can’t harm a man as much as he can harm himself.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Now I’m entirely without hope, and one dies of that more quickly than of cancer”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“I’ve already told you that I don’t consider love a sport.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“The years separated them as effectively as a partition.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Can a condemned tribe lead itself to its own burial?”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“How far is living from dying?”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“She had learned to drink in Russia.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Could a man really know what was best for him? How easily men were deluded by a word, a smile, a gesture.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“The latter was in praise of the virtuous wife, rarer than a pearl.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“Ignorance is the root of all evil.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“She made Herman think of a stale loaf of bread put into a hot oven to be freshened up.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“If time is just a form of perception, or a category of reason, the past is as present as today: Cain continues to murder Abel.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“But basically he remained the same: without belief in himself or in the human race; a fatalistic hedonist who lived in pre-suicidal gloom. Religions lied.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“For in much wisdom is much grief,’ Ecclesiastes said.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story

“her rest. If she had lived in the Middle Ages, she would surely have been a witch and flown a broomstick Saturday night to keep a date with the devil. But the Bronx is one place where the devil would have died of boredom. Her mother is also a witch in her own way, but a good witch: half rebbetzin, half fortuneteller. Every female sits in her own net weaving like a spider. When a fly happens to come along, it’s caught. If you don’t run away, they’ll suck the last drop of life out of you.” “I’ll manage to run away. Goodbye.” “We can be friends. The rabbi is a savage, but he loves people. He has unlimited connections and he can be of use to you. He’s angry at me because I won’t read electronics and television into the first chapter of Genesis. But he’ll find someone who will. Basically he’s a Yankee, although I think he was born in Poland. His real name isn’t Milton but Melech. He writes a check for everything. When he arrives in the next world and has to give an accounting, he’ll take out his checkbook. But, as my grandmother Reitze used to say, ‘Shrouds don’t have pockets.’ ” 3 The telephone rang, but Herman didn’t answer it. He counted the rings and went back to the Gemara. He sat at the table, which was covered with a holiday cloth, studying and intoning as he used to do in the study house in Tzivkev. Mishnah: “And these are the duties the wife performs for the husband. She grinds, bakes, washes, cooks, nurses her child, makes the bed, and spins wool. If she has brought one servant with her, she doesn’t grind, bake, or wash. If”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies, A Love Story