Favourite Quotations & Bon Mots

[Angrboda]

"A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded that he cannot do, never does all he can." ~ J.S. Mill

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." ~ Strawberry Fields Forever, The Beatles

"Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand." ~ Unknown

"It was a woman who drove me to drink and, you know, I never even thanked her." ~ W. C. Fields

Woven into the immense tapestry of Judaic story and lore, peopled as it is by vast branching histories of families, kings and nations and by the fierce dramas of war and passion and the thundering justice of God, there exists, as it were, one quaint and tender image whose great importance may easily be overlooked.

Two men, one young and the other old, are facing each other. The younger man is balancing himself on one leg. The other, whom we may picture wearing a modest skullcap, holds his right hand over his heart and halfway extends his left hand, palm down, toward the first man.

The older man is Hillel the Elder, greatest of the rabbinic patriarchs. The place is Jerusalem, sometime in the forty-year period between 30 BC and 10 AD-during the reign of the hated Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas.

The story in question is from the Talmud and is given there in very few words:

A man approaches Hillel in a nervously defiant attitude. "I will em-brace Judaism," he says, "on the condition that you can teach me the whole of the Torah while I am standing on one foot."

Straightaway, Hillel replies: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary. Now, go and study."