Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown Chaim Potok More Quotes by Chaim Potok More Quotes From Chaim Potok We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much, if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?...I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing; but the eye that blinks, that is something. Chaim Potok pain eye mean Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things. Chaim Potok afternoon-tea happy-things tea Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul Chaim Potok true-friend two people A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. Chaim Potok blink-of-an-eye given men Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship. Chaim Potok lost-friendship honest differences I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth. Chaim Potok torah not-afraid have-faith As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is. Chaim Potok expression silly life Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than the one into which they were brought up. Chaim Potok two reality years All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it. Chaim Potok growing-up family reading He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly. Chaim Potok drinking sleep men … the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth. Chaim Potok grows long world Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different. Chaim Potok fighting people thinking A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Chaim Potok quality may men I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!" Chaim Potok pain heart son It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly. Chaim Potok papa father world I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it. Chaim Potok writing mean thinking You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes-sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to. Chaim Potok pain hurt beautiful I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week. Chaim Potok six half writing There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work. Chaim Potok backgrounds strong religious To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction. Chaim Potok tradition religious fiction
