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7aa896c
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I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.
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Chaim Potok |
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9ffa32e
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Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. 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 s..
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Chaim Potok |
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031a94d
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everything has a past. Everything - a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don't know the past, you can't understand the present and plan properly for the future.
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past
davita
potok
harp
understand
planning
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Chaim Potok |
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22d6827
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Something that is yours forever is never precious
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love
my-name-is-asher-lev
value
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Chaim Potok |
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28df693
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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."
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Chaim Potok |
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de42797
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No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.
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Chaim Potok |
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d7f8fef
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You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it. ... 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 hur..
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pain
silence
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Chaim Potok |
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3aeb200
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A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes, even a great mind can be a shell and cho..
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Chaim Potok |
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f9586bb
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Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.
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Chaim Potok |
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48b733f
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Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
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Chaim Potok |
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b419638
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It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.
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world
my-name-is-asher-lev
potok
judaism
pretty
jewish
jew
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Chaim Potok |
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2db34fc
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Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.
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Chaim Potok |
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08041ac
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For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other's throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the ..
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pain
suffering
asher-lev
hasidic
hasidic-judaism
judaism
paint
torment
painting
jewish
jew
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Chaim Potok |
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48db066
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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
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Chaim Potok |
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f07d3d4
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I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.
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Chaim Potok |
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13ccf02
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I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.
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Chaim Potok |
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479efa2
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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. 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. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
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Chaim Potok |
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85deba8
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A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
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Chaim Potok |
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d9b2dd2
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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.
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Chaim Potok |
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629b8af
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If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.
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Chaim Potok |
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d3205c8
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an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
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Chaim Potok |
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873cafc
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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!"
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compassion
intelligence
hasidic-judaism
judaism
parenting
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Chaim Potok |
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71cd1ea
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But it would have made me a whore to leave it incomplete. It would have made it easier to leave future work incomplete. It would have made it more and more difficult to draw upon that additional aching surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in a created work. I would not be the whore to my own existence. Can you understand that? I would not be the whore to my own existence.
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Chaim Potok |
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b4d075c
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Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.
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Chaim Potok |
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c533991
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Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.
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Chaim Potok |
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e6e447c
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I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views." Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth."
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truth
torah
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Chaim Potok |
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8511f02
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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.
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Chaim Potok |
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00f7ed2
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It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned. . . . You're alone when you're learning. But you always use it on other people. It's different when there are other people involved.
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psychology
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Chaim Potok |
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11f3312
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I cannot have gone through what I went through and have lost what I lost if it's all meaningless.
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Chaim Potok |
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ddb96c3
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Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important thing 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."
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Chaim Potok |
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46bfe51
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A choice tells the world what is most important to a human being. When a man has a choice to make he chooses what is most important to him, and that choice tells the world what kind of a man he is.
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Chaim Potok |
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06ccd1e
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The blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. 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.
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Chaim Potok |
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c3ed19a
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the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
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Chaim Potok |
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d339f1e
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Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me. "Haven't you learned that yet, Reuven?"
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Chaim Potok |
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5d7fe39
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Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.
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special
talent
uniqueness
creativity
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Chaim Potok |
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725b0d1
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My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.
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Chaim Potok |
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a8ce373
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It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon...
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weapon
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Chaim Potok |
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56e9d46
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Why does everything that lives have to die? < So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever, is never precious.
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precious-life
precious
forever
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Chaim Potok |
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04740ab
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In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.
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mythology
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Chaim Potok |
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0adc59d
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Did he really believe God wrote stories that were open to one explanation only? A story that knew but one explanation could hardly be interesting and was certainly not worth the trouble of remembering.
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god
torah
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Chaim Potok |
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f769f68
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The silence became unreal and seemed suddenly filled with a noise of its own, the noise of a too long silence.
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Chaim Potok |
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45f4da9
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I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it.
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Chaim Potok |
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868d6a3
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Now I stand on the knoll before the grave of Jacob Kahn, the cypress tall against the blue morning sky and the wind warm on my face. It is the only sense left me, I hear him say. There are colors in the wind, Asher Lev. Find your demons again and return to your work. Colors wait for you in the wind. Things were too comfortable for you. An artist needs a broken world in order to have pieces to shape into art. Isn't that right, Asher Lev? Com..
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Chaim Potok |
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3c38cc0
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And then I was crying too, crying with Danny, silently, for his pain and for the years of his suffering, knowing that I loved him, and not knowing whether I hated or loved the long, anguished years of his life.
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pain
love
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Chaim Potok |