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Book: The Chosen
Quotes of Book: The Chosen
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  1. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    I felt a sudden momentary sense of unreality, as if the play yard, with its black asphalt floor and its white base lines, were my entire world now, as if all the previous years of my life had led me somehow to this one ball game, and all the future years of my life would depend upon its outcome. I stood there for a moment, holding the glasses in my hand and feeling frightened. Then I took a deep breath, and the feeling passed. It's only a ball game, I told myself. What's a ball game?
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  2. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    To the rabbis who taught in the Jewish parochial schools, baseball was an evil waste of time, a spawn of the potentially assimilationist English portion of the yeshiva day. But to the students of most of the parochial schools, an inter-league baseball victory had come to take on only a shade less significance than a top grade in Talmud, for it was an unquestioned mark of one's Americanism, and to be counted a loyal American had become increasingly important to us during these last years of the war.
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  3. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    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.
    book-quotemeaning-of-lifemeaning

  4. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    In "Culture Confrontation in Urban America," Potok uses the term Zwischenmensch to define himself and his experience of cultural conflict: "Urban wanderings that result in core-culture confrontations often shape a certain kind of individual. I call that individual a Zwischenmensch, a betweenperson. Such an individual will cross the boundaries of his or her own culture and embrace life-enhancing elements from alien worlds.
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  5. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    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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  6. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    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 lves that span, he is something… A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning.
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  7. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    Reuven, I did not want my Daniel to become like my brother, may he rest in peace. Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul. I looked at my Daniel when he was four years old, and I said to myself, How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain? How will I teach it to want to take on another person's suffering? How will I do this and not lose my son, my precious son whom I love as I love the Master of the Universe Himself? How will I do this and not cause my son, God forbid, to abandon the Master of the Universe and His Commandments? How could I teach my son the way I was taught by my father and not drive him away from Torah? Because this is America, Reuven. This is not Europe. It is an open world here. Here there are libraries and books and schools. Here there are great universities that do not concern themselves with how many Jewish students they have. I did not want to drive my son away from God, but I did not want him to grow up a mind without a soul. I knew already when he was a boy that I could not prevent his mind from going to the world for knowledge. I knew in my heart that it might prevent him from taking my place. But I had to prevent it from driving him away completely from the Master of the Universe. And I had to make certain his soul would the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his life.
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  8. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    Rabbinic literature can be studied in two different ways, in two directions, one might say. It can be studied quantitatively or qualitatively - or, as my father once put it, horizontally or vertically. The former involves covering as much material as possible, without attempting to wrest it from it all its implications and intricacies; the latter involves confining oneself to one single area until it is exhaustively covered, and then going on to new material.
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  9. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice. -BEN JONSON
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  10. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one. -KARL A. MENNINGER
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  11. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    ...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...
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  12. Chaim Potok _ The Chosen

    I have always had this sense of books as lined up and waiting, patiently waiting, for people to find them;
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