In Night, Elie Wiesel shares his experience as a young boy in the Nazi concentration camps.
Night Book Quotes With Page Numbers
“In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Page x
“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.”
~Élie Wiesel, Night, Page xii
“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, Night, Page xiii
“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, Night, Page viii
“…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, Night, Page XIV
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Page XV
“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Page XV
Night Book Chapter 1 Quotes
Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?
“I don’t know why,” I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. “I don’t know why.”
After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” he was fond of repeating. “That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don’t understand His answers. We can’t understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!”
“And why do you pray, Moshe?” I asked him. “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, about God, (Character: Elie and Moshe), Chapter 1, Pages 4, 5
“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the real questions.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, about God, (Character: Moshe), Chapter 1, Page 5
“There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. He must not err and wish to enter the orchard through a gate other than his own. That would present a danger not only for the one entering but also for those who are already inside.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Chapter 1, (Character: Moishe to Elie), Page 5
“And in the course of those evenings a conviction grew in me that [he] would draw me with him into eternity, into that time where question and answer would become ONE.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 5
“Yes, we even doubted his resolve to exterminate us. Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means? In the middle of the twentieth century!”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 8
“The news spread through Sighet like wildfire. Soon that was all people talked about. But not for long. Optimism soon revived: The Germans will not come this far. They will stay in Budapest. For strategic reasons, for political reasons … In less than three days, German Army vehicles made their appearance on our streets.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 9
“On the seventh day of Passover, the curtain finally rose: the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun. First edict: Jews were prohibited from leaving their residences for three days, under penalty of death. Moishe the Beadle came running to our house. “I warned you,” he shouted. And left without waiting for a response.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 10
“It was only after the war that I found out who had knocked that night. It was an inspector of the Hungarian police, a friend of my father’s. Before we entered the ghetto, he had told us, “Don’t worry. I’ll warn you if there is danger.” Had he been able to speak to us that night, we might still have been able to flee … But by the time we succeeded in opening the window, it was too late. There was nobody outside.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 14
“The street resembled fairgrounds deserted in haste. There was a little of everything: suitcases, briefcases, bags, knives, dishes, banknotes, papers, faded portraits. All the things one planned to take along and finally left behind. They had ceased to matter.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 17
“That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 19
“Oh God, Master of the Universe, in your infinite compassion, have mercy on us …”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Chapter 1, (Character: Elie and his father), Page 20
“The ghetto was not guarded. One could enter and leave as one pleased. Maria, our former maid, came to see us. Sobbing, she begged us to come with her to her village where she had prepared a safe shelter. My father wouldn’t hear of it. He told me and my big sisters,“If you wish, go there. I shall stay here with your mother and the little one …” Naturally, we refused to be separated.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 20
“No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 1, Page 21
Night Book Chapter 2 Quotes
“The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 2, Page 24
“In front of us, those flames. In the air, the smell of burning flesh. It must have been around midnight. We had arrived. In Birkenau.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 2, Page 28
Night Book Chapter 3 Quotes
“THE BELOVED OBJECTS that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 29
“Men to the left! Women to the right!
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator and an SS with a club), Chapter 3, Page 29
“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, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 29
“We musn’t give up hope, even now as the sword hangs over our heads. So taught our sages…”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: the older men in the camp to their sons), Chapter 3, Page 31
“How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 32
“ I told him that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would never tolerate such crimes… “The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie and Elie’s father), Chapter 3, Page 33
“The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria…”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie’s father), Chapter 3, Page 33
“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, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 33
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
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, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 34
“For us it meant true equality: nakedness. We trembled in the cold. ”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 35
“The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded—and devoured—by a black flame.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 37
“we had to get up whenever a Kapo came in to check if, by chance, somebody had a new pair of shoes. If so, we had to hand them over. No use protesting; the blows multiplied and, in the end, one still had to hand them over. I had new shoes myself. But as they were covered with a thick coat of mud, they had not been noticed. I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and wondrous universe.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 38
“You are in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz…”
A pause. He was observing the effect his words had produced. His face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man, in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
“Remember,” he went on. “Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. Work or crematorium–the choice is yours.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator and an SS officer), Chapter 3, Pages 38, 39
“I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. All I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thoughts, because he whispered in my ear: “It doesn’t hurt.” His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 39
“…we came to a new block. The man in charge was waiting. He was a young Pole, who was smiling at us. He began to talk to us and, despite our weariness, we listened attentively. “Comrades, you are now in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering. Don’t lose hope. You have already eluded the worst danger: the selection. Therefore, muster your strength and keep your faith. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life, a thousand times faith. By driving out despair, you will move away from death. Hell does not last forever … And now, here is a prayer, or rather a piece of advice: let there be camaraderie among you. We are all brothers and share the same fate. The same smoke hovers over all our heads. Help each other. That is the only way to survive”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 41
“Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering. Don’t lose hope. You have already eluded the worst danger: the selection. Therefore, muster your strength and keep your faith. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life, a thousand times of faith. By driving out our despair, you will move away from death. Hell does not last forever…And now, here is a prayer, or rather a piece of advice: let there be camaraderie among you. We are all brothers and share the same fate. The same smoke hovers over all our heads. Help each other. That is the only way to survive.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: the man in charge, a young pole), Chapter 3, Page 41
“…tatooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 42
“I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 3, Page 45
Night Book Chapter 4 Quotes
“They pointed their fingers, the way one might choose cattle, or merchandise.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 4, Page 49
“I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 4, Page 52
“Bite your lips, little brother…Don’t cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now…Wait. Clench your teeth and wait…”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: A young French woman to Elie), Chapter 4, Page 53
“We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 4, Page 60
“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where–hanging here from this gallows…”
That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator and a shouting man), Chapter 4, Pages 64, 65
Night Book Chapter 5 Quotes
“The summer was coming to an end. The Jewish year was almost over. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the last day of that cursed year, the entire camp was agitated and every one of us felt the tension. After all, this was a day unlike all others. The last day of the year. The word “last” had an odd ring to it. What if it really were the last day? The evening meal was distributed, an especially thick soup, but nobody touched it. We wanted to wait until after prayer. On the Appelplatz, surrounded by electrified barbed wire, thousands of Jews, anguish on their faces, gathered in silence. Night was falling rapidly. And more and more prisoners kept coming, from every block, suddenly able to overcome time and space, to will both into submission. What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 5, Page 66
“Blessed be God’s name …” Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm. Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 5, Page 67
“All the earth and the Universe are God’s!”
He kept stopping every moment, as though he did not have the strenght to find the meaning beneath the words. The melody choked in his throat.
And I, mystic that I had been, I thought:
“Yes, man is very strong, greater than God. When You were deceived by Adam and Eve, You drove them out of the Paradise. When Noah’s generation displeased You, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom no longer found favour in Your eyes, You made the sky rain down fire and sulphur. But these men here, whom You have betrayed, whom You have allowed to be tortured, butchered, gassed, burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!”
“All creation bears witness to the Greatness of God”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator and an inmate), Chapter 5, Pages 67, 68
“But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 5, Page 68
“YOM KIPPUR. The Day of Atonement. Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast could mean a more certain, more rapid death. In this place, we were always fasting. It was Yom Kippur year-round. But there were those who said we should fast, precisely because it was dangerous to do so. We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we were capable of singing His praises.”
~Elie Wiesel, Nigh, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 5, Page 69
“Here, take this knife,” he said. “I won’t need it anymore. You may find it useful. Also take this spoon. Don’t sell it. Quickly! Go ahead, take what I’m giving you!” My inheritance …”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie and his father, Shlomo), Chapter 5, Page 75
“Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.” I exploded: “What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?” 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, Night, (Character: Elie’s faceless neighbor), Chapter 5, Pages 80, 81
“He was silent. “Let’s be evacuated with the others,” I said. He didn’t answer. He was looking at my foot. “You think you’ll be able to walk?” “Yes, I think so.” “Let’s hope we won’t regret it, Eliezer.” AFTER THE WAR, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie and Elie’s father), Chapter 5, Page 82
Night Book Chapter 6 Quotes
“ … Death enveloped me, it suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt I could touch it. The idea of dying, of ceasing to be, began to fascinate me. To no longer exist. To no longer feel the excruciating pain of my foot. To no longer feel anything, neither fatigue nor cold, nothing. To break rank, to let myself slide to the side of the road …”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 6, Page 86
“When the SS were tired, they were replaced. But no one replaced us. Chilled to the bone, our throats parched, famished, out of breath, we pressed on.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 6, Page 87
“We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 6, Page 87
“I shall always remember that smile. From what world did it come from?”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 6, Page 90
“He was trying to sleep. Could one fall asleep here? Wasn’t it dangerous to lower one’s guard, even for a moment, when death could strike at any time? Those were my thoughts when I heard the sound of a violin. A violin in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living? Who was this madman who played the violin here, at the edge of his own grave? Or was it a hallucination? It had to be Juliek. He was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence. How had he succeeded in disengaging himself? To slip out from under my body without my feeling it? The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men. I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator about juliek), Chapter 6, Pages 94, 95
“The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying?”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 6, Page 95
Night Book Chapter 7 Quotes
“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, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 7, Page 99
Night Book Chapter 8 Quotes
“I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 8, Page 105
“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, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator about his father), Chapter 8, Page 109
“One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 8, Page 109
“Listen to me, kid. Don’t forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations…”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: the Blockälteste to Elie), Chapter 8, Page 110
“I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last! …”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 8, Page 112
Night Book Chapter 9 Quotes
“OUR FIRST ACT AS FREE MEN was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread. And”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 9, Page 115
“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, Night, (Character: Elie as the narrator), Chapter 9, Page 115
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Page 118
“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Page 119
“And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Page 119
What are some good quotes from the book Night?
“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Page 119
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Page XV
“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, Night, Page 34
“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the real questions.”
~Elie Wiesel, Night, Page 5\
What is a famous quote from Elie Wiesel?
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
~Elie Wiesel
If you found this post helpful, consider sharing it with a classmate reading Night. If not, what is missing that could make this post more helpful?
Sources: