Israel Zangwill

“ Why the devil don't you say something?" And all the impatience of the rapt artist at being interrupted by anything but praise was in the outburst.
"Holy Moses!" I gasped. "Give a man a chance to get his breath. I fall through a dark ante-chamber over a bicycle, stumble round a screen, and—smack! a glare of Oriental sunlight from a gigantic canvas, the vibration and glow of a group of joyous figures, reeking with life and sweat! You the Idealist, the seeker after Nature's beautiful moods and Art's beautiful patterns!" ”

“ Imagine it! Clear coolness of dawn, fresh green, sparkling dew, the road winding up and down, round hills, up cliffs, along valleys, through woods, where the green branches swayed in the morning wind and dappled the grass fantastically with dancing sunlight. And as fresh as the morning, was, I felt, the artistic sensation awaiting me. I swung round the last hill-shoulder; saw the quaint gables of the first house peeping through the trees, and the church spire rising beyond, then groups of Tyrolese converging from all the roads; dipped down the valley, past the quiet lake, up the hills beyond ”

“ And so, not without hope, yet with no expectation of a miracle, I give the Jews a Christ they can now accept, the Christians a Christ they have forgotten. I rebuild for my beloved America a type of simple manhood, unfretted by the feverish lust for wealth or power, a simple lover of the quiet moment, a sweet human soul never dispossessed of itself, always at one with the essence of existence. Who knows but I may suggest the great question: What shall it profit a nation to gain the whole world and lose its own soul? ”

“ What if this were divine chastisement? what if all the outer and inner dreariness that had so steadily enveloped me since I had witnessed the tragedy were punishment for my disbelief? what if this water were really holy, and my sacrilege had brought some grisly Nemesis?"
[Illustration: "'I realised with horror that I had dipped my fingers into holy water.'"]
"You believed that!"
"Not really, of course. But you, as an artist, must understand how one dallies with an idea, plays with a mood, works oneself up imaginatively into a dramatic situation. ”

“ Christ—not the tortured God, but the joyous comrade, the friend of all simple souls; the joyous comrade, with the children clinging to him, and peasants and fishers listening to his chat; not the theologian spinning barren subtleties, but the man of genius protesting against all forms and dogmas that would replace the direct vision and the living ecstasy; not the man of sorrows loving the blankness of underground cells and scourged backs and sexless skeletons, but the lover of warm life, and warm sunlight, and all that is fresh and simple and pure and beautiful. ”

“ My business is with work, not with results. 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do with all thy might.' What can any single hand, even the mightiest, do in this great weltering world? Yet, without the hope and the dream, who would work at all? ”

“ John, and clouds of good American tobacco were rising from six Tyrolese pipes, and many an 'Auf ihr Wohl' was busying the pretty Kellnerin. They trotted out all their repertory of quaint local songs for my benefit. It sounded bully, I tell you, out there with the sunlight, and the green leaves, and the rush of the river; and in this aroma of beer and brotherhood I blessed my damaged thigh. Three days hence! Just time for it to heal. A providential world, after all.
"And it was indeed with a buoyant step and a gay heart that I set out over the hills at sunrise on that memorable morning. ”