2sparrows

I read almost everything Chaim Potok wrote, maybe 8 to 10 years ago.  Recently I saw The Chosen on someone’s coffee table, and it reminded me how much I enjoyed Potok.  So I picked up The Book of Lights again, thinking it was one of my favorites.  It was very good to re-read, and here are just a few quotes:

There is deep, deep within us the irrational…

Where do we read about evil as a separate manifestation, as a result of too abundant a growth of the quality of judgement separated from the quality of mercy?

The days grew short.  Sharp coldness invaded the nights.  He faced the winter with a determined sense of calm, whose source he could not understand but which he found distinctly pleasurable.

Strange how people drifted in and out of your life, and you never really got to know them.

A wise man knows for himself as much as is required, but the man of discernment apprehends the whole, knowing both his own point of view and that of others…

All the world, it seems, is a grayish sea of ambiguit, and we must learn to navigate in it or be drowned.

There was a line about “Gog and Magog,” which reminded me of the name of Doug Wilson’s blog, “Blog and Mablog.”  I had to look it up to see what that was about.