Alan Morinis > Quotes

“THE LUXURIES WE indulge in eventually come to seem to be necessities, as if we could not live without them. —RABBI YISRAEL SALANTER (1810–1883)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“MODESTY AT A WEDDING means rejoicing fully in the singing, dancing, and feasting while inwardly striving to direct all of those activities for the happiness of the wedding couple, not for oneself. —RABBI NOSSON TZVI FINKEL, THE ALTER OF SLABODKA (1849–1927)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“PEOPLE SEARCH relentlessly for a “city of happiness”—not realizing that it could only be found in a “state of mind.” —RABBI AVRAHAM PAM (1913–2001)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“EVERY SIN CAUSES a special anxiety on the spirit, which can only be erased by repentance, which transforms the anxiety itself into inner security and courage. —RABBI ABRAHAM ISAAC KOOK (1865–1935)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“COMPASSION IS AN EXTREMELY noble soul-trait. Anything that one can do to cultivate this soul-trait, one should exert oneself to do. Just as one wishes to receive compassion in one’s own time of need, so too, one should pity others when they are in need. As it is written: “And you should love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). —ORCHOT TZADDIKIM (1540)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“Who is rich?” asks Ben Zoma,17 and he answers, “One who is content with his lot.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“THE SINGLE, INTEGRATED inner experience of caring for, respecting, and bonding to another is love. The object of your love is one whom you care about even more than you are concerned for your own self. You would do or give what the other needs without the slightest feeling that what you have done or given is a sacrifice at all. Those acts and gifts are the fulfillment of love, and life.”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“A PERSON WHO has gained peace of mind has gained everything. To obtain peace of mind, you need to be at peace with the people in your environment. You need to be at peace with yourself, with your emotions and desires. Furthermore, you need to be at peace with your Creator. —RABBI SHLOMO WOLBE (1914–2005)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“The central statement of faith in Judaism is the Sh’ma, which reads: “Hear Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.” Only in silence is it possible to hear.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“Compassion is the feeling of empathy which the pain of one being of itself awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned are they to re-echo the note of suffering which, like a voice from heaven, penetrates the heart.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“A YOUNG STUDENT asked permission to go to a wedding. Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian (1872–1970) asked him if there might be women there dressed immodestly. The student replied that he had prepared a strategy: he wouldn’t look. Rabbi Lopian turned to the student and said, “I’m already over eighty years old, and blind in one eye, yet despite this, I look!”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“Rabbi Elyakim Krumbein puts it, “To fulfill the Torah means to grow as a person, and to grow truly as a person is tantamount to the fulfillment of Torah.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“IF PEOPLE WOULD only be satisfied with the essentials and if they’d only try to improve everyone else’s well-being and share in their common concerns, they’d conquer the world and have more than they ever wanted from it. —RABBI BAHYA IBN PAQUDA (11TH CENTURY)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“WHY IS IT THAT when there is ice on the streets, everyone walks slowly and carefully out of fear of slipping physically, while in their daily lives, people are not afraid of slipping spiritually? —RABBI ISSER ZALMAN MELTZER (1870–1953)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“WHY DO HUMAN BEINGS have cravings over and above their physical needs? It must be that God implanted these unnecessary cravings in us as a challenge. They give us an opportunity to exercise self-control, which is what enables us to rise to the highest spiritual levels. —RABBI ELIYAHU DESSLER (1892–1953)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“When you live with other people and you are content to make a mess in shared spaces, you dishonor the people you live with.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“As the Sages state: ‘The desire for honor removes a man from the world.’ However, the reverse is true concerning others, as the Sages said: ‘Who is honored? He who honors others.’”7 Do not seek honor for yourself, but go out of your way to honor others.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“THERE ARE FOUR TYPES of temperaments. One who is easily angered and easily appeased—his virtue cancels his flaw. One whom it is difficult to anger and difficult to appease—his flaw cancels his virtue. One whom it is difficult to anger and is easily appeased, is pious. One who is easily angered and is difficult to appease, is wicked. —PIRKEI AVOT 5:11”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“EARTHLY PLEASURES and satisfactions bring many good feelings, but joy comes from a higher source. Because joy is a spiritual quality, it can arise independent of the worldly circumstances that happen to be present in someone’s life at any given moment. And so the songbird of joy is ready to sing within a person who is rich or poor, healthy or ailing, captive or free, as long as it is fed a diet of spiritual seeds.”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“THE HEBREW WORD for “truth” is composed of the three letters that are the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The three Hebrew letters that spell “falsehood” stand next to one another. This tells us that truth creates a firm foundation, like the three legs of a stool, while falsehood is unstable because it stands on a narrow base.”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“THE MORE POSSESSIONS, the more worries” (Pirkei Avot 2:7). Do not think that your wealth and property will allow you to live happily and well. On the contrary—you will be caught up in taking care of them all year round. Any intelligent person can tell you that this is so, and any wealthy person can confirm it. —RABBEINU YONAH OF GERONDI (D. 1263)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“WHAT WE CALL LOVE is actually a deep interweaving of beings. The emotion we feel is actually a marker that the other person or thing has become part of ourselves; we are no longer separate from the other. This explains why losing someone or something we love hurts so much. It is not just “as if” something has been torn from us. When we enter love, a part of ourselves merges with the other and when we lose love, a part of ourselves is torn away.”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“In Pirkei Avot4 we learn that “the world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the service of God, and upon acts of loving-kindness.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“Patience is about responsibility—for your emotional response to situations, and for the situations themselves. Wait—and be saved like a bird from a snare; Hurry, and usher your soul to despair. —YOSEF QIMHI (C. 1160–1235)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“As long as the candle is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish and to mend!”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“When asked how he had had such an impact as a great sage and leader in the twentieth-century Jewish world, the Chafetz Chaim answered, “I set out to try to change the world, but I failed. So I decided to scale back my efforts and only try to influence the Jewish community of Poland, but I failed there, too. So I targeted the community in my hometown of Radin, but achieved no greater success. Then I gave all my effort to changing my own family, and failed at that as well. Finally, I decided to change myself, and that’s how I had such an impact on the Jewish world.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“I have even heard holiness defined as the absence of self-interest.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“AWE IS A natural human response to an overwhelmingly profound experience. It takes no effort at all to feel the inner expansiveness that arises when our eyes take in a sunset or see a whale breaching. But only an inner instrument that has been polished and honed will find just as much awe in less dramatic situations—awe not because I see a sight, but because I am able to see, not because the sunset is spectacular, but because there is a sun. Cultivate the capacity to feel awe and the whole world becomes awesome.”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

“Occupy a rightful space, neither too much nor too little. Focus neither on your own virtues nor the faults of others.”
― Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

“PREFER DEATH TO a lying word, for the ripple-effect of its plunder is worse. When a man dies, he dies alone— but many are slain with the lie and its curse. —AVRAHAM IBN HASDAI (C. 915–990)”
― Alan Morinis, Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar