Mussar Sayings

"A person who has mastered peace of mind has gained everything. To obtain peace of mind, you need to be at peace with your emotions and desires." - Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv

"Rise above events that are inconsequential - both bad and good for they are not worth disturbing your equanimity." - Rabbi Menachem Mendel Lefin

“Man wants to achieve greatness overnight, and he wants to sleep well that night too.” – Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok

“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.”

“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.

“Who is rich?” asks Ben Zoma, and he answers, “One who is content with his lot.”

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.”

“To fulfill the Torah means to grow as a person, and to grow truly as a person is tantamount to the fulfillment of Torah.” - Rabbi Elyakim Krumbein

“When you live with other people and you are content to make a mess in shared spaces, you dishonor the people you live with.”

In Pirkei Avot we learn that “the world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the service of God, and upon acts of loving-kindness.”

“As long as the candle is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish and to mend!”

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. Do not seek honor for yourself, but go out of your way to honor others.

“Take time, be exact, unclutter the mind." — Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm

“Occupy a rightful space, neither too much nor too little. Focus neither on your own virtues nor the faults of others. Generally, man finds his delight in examining his own virtues, in discovering even the smallest of his positive attributes and the most minute faults of his friends, for he can then find reason to be proud even when in the company of great ones whose little fingers are thicker than his loins.”

“Equanimity is a quality of being centered in yourself, though at the same time being exquisitely sensitive to the forces that are at work all around, or else you will be vulnerable to being tossed around by the sorts of unexpected waves that crash in on every life.”

“The second stage in Mussar practice involves restraint. Our new awareness calls out for active steps to change the circumstances of our lives. Once we realize how rarely the moments of real silence occur in our days, we can restrain the input and the output of noise that swirls around us. We do have a choice.”

“The pursuit of comforts and pleasure depletes spiritual energy simply because we have only so much energy in our lives. We waste precious energy by running after the shiny apple, and then we have nothing left for higher pursuits.”

“Being a servant of God means striving to align my will to that of the Master. I desire to unify my will with God’s will within my own life and to delight in that unification."

“Do His will as if it were your will that He may do your will as if it were His will.” - Rabbi Gamliel

“Gossip is passing on to a person the negative things someone else had said.”

“Who is rich?” and then answers, “He who rejoices in his own lot.”

“It is not enough to feel reverence; one must act reverently.”

“Awaken to the good and give thanks.”

“I have even heard holiness defined as the absence of self-interest.”

"Say little and do much." — Rabbi Natan said, “What does this mean? It teaches that the righteous say little and do much, whereas the wicked say much and do not even a little.”

"The main gift that the Mussar tradition makes available to us is a very accurate map of the inner life, along with practices to help us develop in the direction of our ideals."

"The proposition that lies at the heart of Mussar is that because life is inherently a process of growing and we have free will, it is within our power and capacity to direct the process of our own change…The more we become living embodiments of our ideals, the more we transition from our partialness (even brokenness) toward becoming more whole, and in wholeness we become vessels for holiness itself. The Mussar masters tell us that this is the open secret that makes sense of the journey of life."