Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.
Chaim PotokRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Truth should be presented in a gentle and indirect manner for people to accept and understand it.
This quote by Chaim Potok emphasizes the importance of how truth is conveyed to others. When truth is presented too directly, it can be overwhelming and difficult for people to accept, similar to a bull charging at them. Instead, by hiding the truth within riddles or indirect messages, individuals are encouraged to seek it out and discover it gradually, which fosters understanding and allows them to come to terms with it in their own time.
Themes
TruthRiddlesUnderstandingAcceptanceWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on emotional intelligence, a speaker might use this quote to illustrate the importance of gentle communication.
More from Chaim Potok
All quotes →… 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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A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
Chaim PotokRead
A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
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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 PotokRead
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 PotokRead
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