Top 80 Sholom Aleichem Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Don’t you know that you can skin the bear in the forest, but you can’t sell its hide there?”

— Sholom Aleichem

52. “Second, I wish all my enemies would burst from the bellyful your last letter gave me.”

— Sholom Aleichem

53. “Then she gave him a few good smacks in the face. These he accepted like a philosopher.”

— Sholom Aleichem

54. “Once, matches were made behind a child’s back; you came home from shaking hands with your in-laws, you wished the bride or groom a mazel tov, and that was that.”

— Sholom Aleichem

55. “I don’t know how it is with other writers, but I’ve been treated like the lowest of the low.”

— Sholom Aleichem

56. “They’re a lovely couple – she doesn’t mind his not being too bright and he doesn’t mind her not looking so good. But beauty makes nothing good, my mother says. It’s goodness that makes everything beautiful.”

— Sholom Aleichem

57. “My mother spoke about being a widow with two sons, one swimming in chicken fat and the other the poor little fellow sitting next to her.”

— Sholom Aleichem

58. “As my mother says, “God is a father. He punishes with one hand and heals with the other.” That’s something I don’t get. Why punish and then heal? You could save yourself the trouble by skipping both.”

— Sholom Aleichem

59. “I don’t care what I’ll be in America. I just want to get there. I’m dying to see the place. I’ve made up my mind to learn three things there: swimming, writing, and cigar smoking. I mean I can do all three already. But I’ll do them better in America.”

— Sholom Aleichem

60. “Who was he talking to? Me? No one ever said “please” to me. I looked around. There was no one else in the room. Old Luria growled again in a deep voice: “Please come and have a look at the Rambam.”

— Sholom Aleichem

61. “To make a long story short, he went round and round – it helped like cupping helps a corpse.”

— Sholom Aleichem

62. “But it’s as my mother says: “If you want to learn how to grow cabbages, ask the gardener, not the goat.”

— Sholom Aleichem

63. “His funeral procession, said to have been the largest in New York City’s history, included more than one hundred thousand participants. Most were devoted readers.”

— Sholom Aleichem

64. “And you have three children, bless them. “Remember your own and you’ll forget the next man’s,” my mother says.”

— Sholom Aleichem

65. “Where were they coming from? From Zhmerinka, and from Kazatin, and from Razdyelne, and from Popelne, and from a few-other places that were equally famous for their roughnecks.”

— Sholom Aleichem

66. “Better to wish yourself well than another ill,” as my mother says.”

— Sholom Aleichem

67. “I shook so hard from fear that the couch moved from the wall.”

— Sholom Aleichem

68. “But a lot you care when all you can think of is your fine Yehupetz ladies. They should gash themselves on their diamonds and bleed to death!”

— Sholom Aleichem

69. “How does it say in the Talmud: Who giveth life giveth also the fruit of the vine. Rashi interprets it as: God may be God, but brandy is brandy. L’chayim!”

— Sholom Aleichem

70. “My mother, bless her, had your number when she said, “Don’t hold your breath waiting for him, because nothing good comes from a graveyard.”

— Sholom Aleichem

71. “When the cow goes to pasture,” says my mother, “it forgets to say good-bye.”

— Sholom Aleichem

72. “There’s a limit to everything; even chicken soup with kreplach can get to be too much.”

— Sholom Aleichem

73. “The worse heartache,” says my mother, “is the one you can’t bare.”

— Sholom Aleichem

74. “My mother says dumplings in a dream are a dream and not dumplings.”

— Sholom Aleichem

75. “It’s no picnic, your Russian grammar; you have to mind your p’s and q’s.”

— Sholom Aleichem

76. “It makes my heart ache to see people living such fine lives when I have to sit here like a widow in black, waiting to hear from my fine breadwinner.”

— Sholom Aleichem

77. “Just be careful, Mendl, that you don’t turn into such a great success that I have to send you your carfare again.”

— Sholom Aleichem

78. “Send us the cure – the affliction we already have.”

— Sholom Aleichem

79. “Daughter,” said my mother, “always remember this prayer: Protect me, dear God, from a Berdichev tycoon, an Uman fanatic, a Mohilev skeptic, a Konstantin servant, a Kamenetz politician, and a Yehupetz rogue.”

— Sholom Aleichem

80. “And you sit in Yehupetz without a word! There’s no excuse. If you’re dead, the least you could do is let me know, and if you’re alive, all the more reason to write.”

— Sholom Aleichem

81. “You know what, Mendl? Listen to your wife, tell Odessa where it can go, and come home to Kasrilevke.”

— Sholom Aleichem

82. “The wise man blesses the whip that flogs him,” says my mother.”

— Sholom Aleichem

83. “If I were the Tsar I’d eat nothing but bread and watermelon all year round. I don’t even mind the seeds. Give your melon a shake and they fall right out and you can eat all you want. Boy oh boy!”

— Sholom Aleichem

84. “Meanwhile, I’m having stomach trouble. It shouldn’t happen to you but all that iced cream has done me no good.”

— Sholom Aleichem

85. “Pinye said Canada was in Canada. To be exact, it was in America. That is, Canada and America were the same place, with a difference.”

— Sholom Aleichem

86. “You see, I come from Mezritch, though I grew up in Mazapevke, but Vorotolivke is where I’m still registered.”

— Sholom Aleichem