Top 80 Sholom Aleichem Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

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

— Sholom Aleichem

54. “Once the custom was for a bankrupt to leave town, but that’s no longer in vogue. It’s not even called bankruptcy any more. The expression is, “I’m in arrears.” In plain language that means, “Kiss my rear.”

— Sholom Aleichem

55. “There’s never been, she says, a wedding like it. The pastries, the roasts, the tortes, the honey cakes, the strudels, the breads, the jams and the jellies – all for her wedding! Now the wedding is over and Brokheh owns a fur stole and a noodle sieve.”

— Sholom Aleichem

56. “In short, I began getting offers from all over the world: from Kamenets, and from Yelisavet, and from Gomel, and from Lubin, and all the way from Mogilev, and from Berdichev, and Kaminka, and even Brody.”

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

61. “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

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

64. “But after the last straw, there’s always more, as my mother says.”

— Sholom Aleichem

65. “Not everyone would do for a husband what I’ve done. All that fancy living has gone to his lordship’s head.”

— Sholom Aleichem

66. “In short, he kept waiving me such waivers that I waved goodbye to him and went to see a third lawyer, that’s where I went.”

— Sholom Aleichem

67. “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

68. “Everyone is going to America and no one has a way of getting there. Some folks have been sent back to Russia. Some have found work in Lemberg. Some have been sent on to Cracow.”

— Sholom Aleichem

69. “A drunk grows sober before a fool grows wise,” says my mother, more health to her.”

— Sholom Aleichem

70. “A man is only flesh and blood, after all; you can’t fill a stomach with words.”

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

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

— Sholom Aleichem

75. “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

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. “Why not teach him a trade?” Pinye says. “Americans work with their hands.”

— Sholom Aleichem

79. “All you men are the same – you’re not fit to fasten your wives’ apron strings.”

— Sholom Aleichem

80. “Don’t you know that you can skin the bear in the forest, but you can’t sell its hide there?”

— Sholom Aleichem

81. “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

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

— Sholom Aleichem

83. “You say you’re going like a house afire, Mendl? Why don’t you jump into the flames! I wouldn’t come see you in Boiberik if you were on your deathbed!”

— Sholom Aleichem

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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