Shmuel Yosef Agnon quotes

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was a Ukrainian-born writer and one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. His works blend traditional Jewish themes with modernist techniques and explore the complexities of Jewish life and identity. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his profound contribution to world literature. Here are 18 of his quotes:

But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

After all my possessions had been burned, God gave me the wisdom to return to Jerusalem.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

The old man ... received the Sabbath with sweet song and chanted the hallowing tunefully over raisin wine; while it was still day he hallowed and the sun came to gaze at his glass. ... The table was well spread with all manner of fruit, beans, greenstuffs and good pies, plum water tasting like wine, but of flesh and of fish there was never a sign. ... in truth it is in no way obligatory to eat flesh and fish ... He and she, meaning the old man and the old woman, had never tasted flesh since growing to maturity.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

The beginnings of my studies also came to me from my father, as well as from the Rabbinical Judge of our town. But they were preceded by three tutors under whom I studied, one after the other, from the time I was three and a half till I turned eight and a half.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Our days on earth are like a shadow, and the time of our affliction is the length of our days.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Sometimes small things lead to great joys.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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

Shmuel Yosef Agnon