the spark

some jumbled thoughts...
"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 treaure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into a flame. it must learn to seek 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 choke the spark."

"human beings do not live forever, reuvan. 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 there is to a human to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? i learned a long time ago that a blink of the eye itself is nothing. but the eye that blinks, that is something. he can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. 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. a life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. i want to be worthy of rest when i am no loger here."

-the chosen by chaim potok