“ Look at us. We build giant highways and murderously fast cars for killing each other and committing suicide. Instead of bomb shelters we construct gigantic frail glass buildings all over Manhattan at Ground Zero, a thousand feet high, open to the sky, life a woman undressing before an intruder and provoking him to rape her. We ring Russia's borders with missilelaunching pads, and then scream that she's threatening us. In all history there's never been a more lurid mass example of the sadistmasochist expression of the thanatos instinct than the present conduct of the United States. The Nazis by comparison were Eagle Scouts. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3.6K
“ Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and the fearful...Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simplethough it is that too, much to its gloryit is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the firstclass minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way....speaking of crutchesFreud can be a crutch, Marx can be a crutch, rationalism can be a crutch, and atheism can be two canes and a pair of iron braces. We none of us have all the answers, nor are we likely to have. But in the country of the halt, the man who is surest he has no limp may be the worstcrippled. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3.3K
“ Remember the good hours when the words are flowing well. And never mind the bad hours; there is no life without them. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
“ He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. "What!" he said. "The atheists guzzles his whiskey and eats pork and wallows with women all his life long, and then repents the day before he dies and stands guiltless? While I spend a lifetime trying to please God?" My grandfather pointed to the book. "So it is written," he said gently.—"Written!" the lodger roared. "There are books and there are books." And he slammed back into his room. The lodger's outrage seemed highly logical. My grandfather pointed out afterward that cancelling the past does not turn it into a record of achievement. It leaves it blank, a waste of spilled years. A man had better return, he said, while time remains to write a life worth scanning. And since no man knows his death day, the time to get a grip on his life is the first hour when the impulse strikes him. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.3K
“ I offer the book, relying on the maxim of Rabbi Tarfon in Ethics of the Fathers: The work is not yours to finish; but neither are you free to take no part in it. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3K
“ He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. "What!" he said. "The atheists guzzles his whiskey and eats pork and wallows with women all his life long, and then repents the day before he dies and stands guiltless? While I spend a lifetime trying to please God?" My grandfather pointed to the book. "So it is written," he said gently.—"Written!" the lodger roared. "There are books and there are books." And he slammed back into his room. The lodger's outrage seemed highly logical. My grandfather pointed out afterward that cancelling the past does not turn it into a record of achievement. It leaves it blank, a waste of spilled years. A man had better return, he said, while time remains to write a life worth scanning. And since no man knows his death day, the time to get a grip on his life is the first hour when the impulse strikes him. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.7K
“ Remember the good hours when the words are flowing well. And never mind the bad hours; there is no life without them. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.3K
“ We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 2.9K
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3.8K
“ The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 125
“ I felt there's a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I'd be a jerk not to take advantage of it. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3.6K
“ We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3.9K
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3K
“ The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.2K
“ I felt there's a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I'd be a jerk not to take advantage of it. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 374
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 340
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
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“ Illusion is an anodyne, bred by the gap between wish and reality. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 2.6K
“ We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 2.4K
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.6K
“ The only imaginative fiction being written today is income tax returns. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 2.6K
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.2K
“ We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 3.4K
“ We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 2.8K
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 2.4K
“ The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough voters to win the next election. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1.5K
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 287
“ Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ”
- Herman Wouk- Copy
- 1