Quote

It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.

Mary Antin

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Mary Antin
Age: 67 †
Born: 1881
Born: June 13
Died: 1949
Died: May 15
Author
Writer
Polatsk
Mary Antin Grabau
Much
Painful
Garments
Long
Heavy
Consciously
Would
Afraid
Limbs
Like
Running
Seeks
Clings
World
Two
Worlds
Vividly
Past
Wander
Garment
Remember
Jew
Forgetfulness
Live
Remembered
Wandering

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It is not that I belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.
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The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family.
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Among the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks, green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers eaten on Sabbath evenings at the end of those walks.
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We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
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On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.
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The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.
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You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.
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His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture but he never learned to write correctly and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.
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A little instruction in the elements of chartography—a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map—would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.
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There was one public school for boys, and one for girls, but Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers - only ten to a hundred and even the lucky ones had their troubles.
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I want now to be of today. It is painful to be conscious of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.
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You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.
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It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.
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Such creatures of accident are we, liable to a thousand deaths before we are born. But once we are here, we may create our own world, if we choose.
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A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.
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A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises.
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There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.
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The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.
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A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.
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What we get in steerage is not the refuse, but the sinew and bone of all the nations.
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