Maurice Samuel

Maurice Samuel (February 8, 1895 – May 4, 1972) was a Romanian-born British and American novelist, translator and lecturer.

You Gentiles (1924)

• In everything we are destroyers—even in the instruments of destruction to which we turn for relief. The very socialism and internationalism through which our choked spirit seeks utterance, which seem to threaten your way of life, are alien to our spirit's demands and needs. Your socialists and internationalists are not serious. The charm of these movements, the attraction, such as it is, which they exercise, is only in their struggle: it is the fight which draws your gentile radicals.
  • Pp. 152–153

• We Jews, we, the destroyers, will remain the destroyers for ever. Nothing that you do will meet our needs and demands. We will destroy because we need a world of our own, a God-world, which it is not in your nature to build. Beyond all temporary alliances with this or that action lies the ultimate split in nature and destiny, the enmity between the Game and God.
  • P. 155

• The thinking man needs no scientist to teach him the wonder of creation: he needs neither a telescope nor a microscope in order to see God; nor do formulae teach him the nature of God. Life itself, being, the staggering wonder of mere existence, fills completely, crams beyond all possibility of addition, the faculty of astonishment and bewilderment in the sensitive man. Those to whom existence has become commonplace by familiarity—or who have never been smitten prostrate by the riddle of existence—need a crescendo succession of "shockers" to touch their brutish minds. They didn't know the marvel of the universe until they learned of electricity; but now that electricity is as commonplace as sunlight, they need a theory of relativity; and when that is played out as an advertising stunt for the ingenuity of the Almighty, they will need something else.
  • Pp. 169–170

• The fool that saith in his heart there is no God is the city fool to whom nothing is wonderful any more: and those who do not know wonder do not know God.
  • Pp. 170–171