Thursday marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday Purim, a spring festival celebrated on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar. People enjoy the day by wearing different costumes, dancing, conducting parades and having traditional food. It was first celebrated in the first century A.D.

This year, Purim begins Thursday evening and ends the following evening. Here are 10 quotes, sayings and Bible verses, courtesy the Reporter Times, to share on the Jewish holiday:

  1. "I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken." – Psalm 16:8
  2. "For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?" – Esther 4:14
  3. "In them the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoil." – Esther 8:11
  4. "Jews survived all the defeats, expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, the centuries in which they were regarded as a pariah people, even the Holocaust itself, because they never gave up the faith that one day they would be free to live as Jews without fear." – Jonathan Sacks, rabbi and Jewish scholar
  5. "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth." – Deuteronomy 7:6
  6. "In Jewish history there are no coincidences." – Elie Wiesel
  7. "A righteous man falls down seven times and gets up." – Proverbs 24:16
  8. "Who is wise? One who learns from every man… Who is strong? One who overpowers his inclinations… Who is rich? One who is satisfied with his lot… Who is honorable? One who honors his fellows." – Ben Zoma, Ethics of the Fathers 4:1
  9. "If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example." ― Anne Frank
  10. "I don't speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don't have the power to remain silent." – Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook
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Ultra-Orthodox Jews take part in a ceremony performed on the Jewish holiday of Purim in Ashdod, Israel, Feb. 28, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
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