Elie Wiesel’s book Night is based on his experiences with his father in Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the Holocaust.
It is a raw, horrifying, and extremely moving personal account of his survival as a youth in Nazi concentration camps.
Let’s go through some of the best quotes from Night book.
Table of Contents
Night Quotes by Elie Wiesel
“We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to life as long as God himself” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“How was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy?” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria…” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.” ~ Élie Wiesel, Night.
“Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer—or my life, period- would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
Other Book Quotes: After We Fell Quotes by Anna Todd and Dead Poets Society Quotes by N.H. Kleinbaum
Best Night Quotes by Elie Wiesel
“Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“It is not always events that have touched us personally that affect us the most.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
Quotes from Night by Elie Wiesel
“The gates of the camp opened. It seemed as though an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“I am not so naïve as to believe that this slim volume will change the course of history or shake the conscience of the world. Books no longer have the power they once did. Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything–death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
Famous Night Quotes by Elie Wiesel
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed….Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . .” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“It was neither German nor Jew who ruled the ghetto – it was illusion.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Then the train resumed its journey, leaving in its wake, in a snowy field in Poland, hundreds of naked orphans without a tomb.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
Powerful Night Quotes by Elie Wiesel
“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“…I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
Profound Night Quotes by Elie Wiesel
“I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. We must never make the mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate but our own. To do this is dangerous for the one who enters and also for those who are already there.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“His breathing was labored. His eyes were closed. But I was convinced that he was seeing everything. That he was seeing the truth in all things.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don’t know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Suffering confers no privileges; it is what one does with suffering that matters.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. (pg. 39)” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.” ~ Elie Wiesel (Quotes from Night).
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