Elie Wiesel Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Destiny, People

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.12, Macmillan

• There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Writing, Eight

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.72, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I have no doubt that faith is only pure when it does not negate the faith of another. I have no doubt that evil can be fought and that indifference is no option. I have no doubt that fanaticism is dangerous. And of all the books in the world on life, I have no doubt that the life of one person weighs more than them all.

  Elie Wiesel

  Life, Book, Evil

  Interview with Oprah Winfrey, www.oprah.com. November 2000.

• I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

  Elie Wiesel

  Believe, Book, Yesterday

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.11, Macmillan

• It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Historical Novels, Captivity

• I was inspired by the marvelous example of Giacometti, the great sculptor. He always said that his dream was to do a bust so small that it could enter a matchbook, but so heavy that no one could lift it. That's what a good book should be.

  Elie Wiesel

  Dream, Book, Example

• In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Writing, Biblical

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.4, Hill and Wang

• I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Home, Tables

• I was never without a book in my hand.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Hands

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• I believe in books. And when our people [coughing] - our people of Jerusalem, let's say after the Romans destroyed the temple and the city, all we took is a little book, that's all. Not treasures, we had no treasures. They were ransacked, taken away. But the book - the little book - and this book produced more books, thousands, hundreds of thousands of books, and in the book we found our memory, and our attachment to that memory is what kept us alive.

  Elie Wiesel

  Memories, Book, Taken

  Source: www.savetibet.org

• What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.

  Elie Wiesel

  Memories, Book, Commitment

  "Building a Moral Society". Chamberlin Lecture at Lewis and Clark College, 1995.

• I developed an anger at [Moses] Mendelssohn. Later, I read the book. I realized there was nothing subversive in it.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Moses, Mendelssohn

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, French Culture, Feels

  "Fresh Air Remembers Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor And Nobel Peace Laureate". "Fresh Air" With David Bianculli, www.npr.org. July 8, 2016.

• The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, and so are you.

  Elie Wiesel

  Daughter, Mother, Teacher

• In my town we studied the five Books of Moses, but rarely the prophets. We studied the Talmud so much that I sometimes knew the prophets because of the prophetic quotations in the Talmud. We almost never studied the prophets themselves.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Towns, Sometimes

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• For the purpose of my life, I don't ask the question. First of all, I believe. I think the Five Books of Moses are inspired. Call it divine. I don't know. But I would certainly call it inspired.

  Elie Wiesel

  Believe, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• I'm a privileged person, I feel privileged because of who I am. I write books, I write novels, I write essays and I teach and I go from university to university. I'm one of the old, but I still go around, but I only see those who are not like that, I don't see the junk youth. I only meet students, and even those who are not formally at the university, if they come to listen to me, they come to read me, it means they are not junk students.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Mean, Writing

  Interview with Professor Georg Klein, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2004.

• Josiah has a tremendous reputation in the text. He rediscovered the Book of the Law; you remember how Hilkiah the High Priest somehow found it [2 Kings 22:8].

  Elie Wiesel

  Kings, Book, Law

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Yiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, World, Firsts

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

• [The Book of the Law]was lost for so many years. And then Josiah decided to celebrate Passover. The text says that "The Passover sacrifice had not been offered in that way ... during the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah" [2 Kings 23:22]. What do you mean? Not in the days of David and Solomon? Never before? And what of the days of the prophets? What happened? That's what I'm anguishing over. If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too.

  Elie Wiesel

  Kings, Book, Mean

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• [My approach to the Bible, history does really matter.] Everything matters. But I have priorities. For instance, for me to know whether there were two Isaiahs or one is less important than the text itself. Of course I read the arguments for and against. But it's not my task in life to say there were two or three authors of Isaiah's book, or how many authors there were of Deuteronomy. This is not what I'm doing.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Two, Priorities

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• If the Book of the Law could be forgotten for so many years, who knows what was done to it during those years? Maybe it was lost later, too. And another one replaced it, and that one is no longer the original text. These are questions that perturb me much more than whether it's history or not history.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Years, Law

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• One day - I remember it was a Sabbath afternoon - I came to the synagogue with a book in my hand. I saw a commentary on the Bible by a certain Rabbi Moshe Dessauer, better known as Moses Mendelssohn. An elderly man came up to me - I was then maybe 10 or 12. "What are you studying?" he said. "Dessauer's commentaries," I said. So he gave me a slap on my face.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Men, Elderly

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• We know, for instance, of "The Book of the Wars of the Lord." It is mentioned in the text [Numbers 21:14]. There was a book: Where is it? One day you will dig and you will maybe find it. [Laughter]

  Elie Wiesel

  Laughter, War, Book

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

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