Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

Well everybody in Casablanca has problems. Yours may work out.

If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

We know there are poets who are chosen: by what or whom, we no more know than what lies beyond our final breath, or what caused a certain action which resulted in the fulfillment or the desecration and collapse of what we most cared for in life.

In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned that no one was immune to capricious tragedy.

Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, sometimes you are unlucky, but that's life.

The road that I'm on is a path that I didn't choose. It chose me. I'm just trying to walk it, and to do the best that I can to honor and respect it.

Niall: We're tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will.

Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? Be strong and of a good courage. Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. . . . If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.

Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment.

Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is the wriggle.

Life is a voyage, and we are all sailing under sealed orders. We plan, plot, scheme and arrange, and some fine day Fate steps in and our dreams are tossed into the yeasty deep. We grin and bear it--anyway we bear it: it is the only thing to do.

The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

And if our future Lies on the final line Are we brave enough To see the signals and the signs?

Drink! For you know not whence you came nor why.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

You never know how you'll turn out till you've been down to half a dollar and no prospects.

Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.

Death did not play favorites—He loved all equally. What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure . The god's voice—not quite words, just a thread of meaning laid in my receptive mind—

I've always thought of myself as being a warrior. When you actually have a battle, it's better than when you don't know who to fight.