Chaim Potok Short Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

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A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.

Chaim Potok
Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

Chaim Potok
Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

Chaim Potok
It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.

Chaim Potok
In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

Chaim Potok
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.

Chaim Potok
A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

Chaim Potok
Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

Chaim Potok
An artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.

Chaim Potok
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

Chaim Potok
I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

Chaim Potok
Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

Chaim Potok
Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.

Chaim Potok
A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

Chaim Potok
It was senseless, as— I held my breath, feeling myself shiver with fear— as Billy's blindness was senseless.

Chaim Potok
If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.

Chaim Potok
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
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
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 dimension all its own.

Chaim Potok
Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

Chaim Potok
…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.

Chaim Potok
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
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.

Chaim Potok