Tevye Quotes

You see how it is, my dear friends. There's no pleasing everyone. It's hopeless to even try, and the more you play the peacemaker, the less peaceful things become.

When the heart is full it runs out of the eyes.

There is nothing in the world, I tell you, so maddening as a person who doesn't answer when you abuse him. You shout and you scold, you are ready to burst a gut, and he stands there and smiles....

I mention her name and the old pain returns. Forget her, you say? How can you forget a living human being?

Why should today be different? (Tevye)

I never turn down a drink. Among friend's it's always appropriate. A man is only a man as they say but brandy is still brandy. You'll find that in the Talmud too.

Tell me yourself—rather than suffering because of daughters, as Tevye has, is it not a thousand times better to lie in the ground and bake bagels?

We all need the comforting illusion of stability and security in this shaky rooftop of a thing we call life. Tevye is right; we are all fiddlers, trying to scratch out a simple tune without breaking our necks.

There’s an old saying, you know, that if you scratch a secret, you’ll find a thief.

Every Jew was the last Jew; Tevye the Terminal, every single one. Yet, Kugel couldn't help but observe, in all that time - no last Jew. There had been a last Assyrian. There had been a last Ammonite. There had been a last Babylonian, a last Mesopotamian, a last of the Mohicans. But no last Jew.

we’ll start right in on the knishes, or the kreplach, or the knaidlach, or the varnishkes, or the pirogen, or the blintzes.

You know what, Pan Sholem Aleichem? Let’s talk about something more cheerful. Have you heard any news of the cholera in Odessa?

A man is only flesh and blood, after all; you can’t fill a stomach with words.

I only wanted to be good—the trouble is that being good gets you nowhere.

Then she held out her hands, though all she could say was a single whispered word: “Pa-pa …” Please don’t think any worse of me for having tears in my eyes now.

You see, I come from Mezritch, though I grew up in Mazapevke, but Vorotolivke is where I’m still registered.

I’m only human. A house without a woman is no house …’ It did as much good as last winter’s snow, of course.

This is the “tradition” that Tevye the Milkman so lovingly sings of in Fiddler on the Roof.

What one finds in Jewish storytelling, though, is something really different: a kind of realism that comes from humility, from the knowledge that one cannot be true to the human experience while pretending to make sense of the world. These are stories without conclusions, but full of endurance and resilience. They are about human limitations, which means that the stories are not endings but beginnings, the beginning of the search for meaning rather than the end—and the power of resilience and endurance to carry one through to that meaning. Tevye, after grieving for his wife, daughter, and son-in-law and being expelled from his home, finally leaves the reader with a line that would never work on Broadway: “Tell all

Fiddler on the Roof gave a lot of attention to pogroms but made no mention of the fact that they were connected with the assassination of two Czars and the rise of the revolutionary Jew in Russia. There is no mention of Jews like Sverdlov murdering the Czar and his family in the aftermath of the revolution that never got mentioned either, because by then Tevye was living on the lower East Side of New York.

Even before World War II, some parents began to redefine love. But they could usually afford to do that only after their last child was “married off,” as with Tevye and Golde of Fiddler on the Roof.1 TEVYE: Golde. . . . Do you love me? GOLDE: Do I love you? For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, Cooked your meals, cleaned your house, Given you children, milked the cow. After twenty-five years, why talk about Love right now? . . . TEVYE: But my father and my mother Said we’d learn to love each other. . . . Do you love me? GOLDE: For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him Fought with him, starved with him Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?

All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum As you can imagine, this unfortunate condition has an adverse impact on Tevye’s milkman career, as it seriously hampers his ability to interact with his customers: CUSTOMER: I need two quarts of milk and one pint of cream. TEVYE: Okay, that’s two quarts of milk and one pint of boody booboo

Don’t you know that you can skin the bear in the forest, but you can’t sell its hide there?

Do you know what my grandmother used to say? What a shame it is we have mouths, because if we didn’t we’d never go hungry

Where were they coming from? From Zhmerinka, and from Kazatin, and from Razdyelne, and from Popelne, and from a few-other places that were equally famous for their roughnecks.

There’s a limit to everything; even chicken soup with kreplach can get to be too much.

It’s an old Jewish custom to pick up and go elsewhere at the first mention of a pogrom.

There were, it appeared, more ways to skin a Katz than one …

What do I care if the weather is sunny When I’m all out of luck and all out of money

We had a good scare in our town when they broke out, because we were afraid pogroms would come next.

In short, he kept waiving me such waivers that I waved goodbye to him and went to see a third lawyer, that’s where I went.

Once, matches were made behind a child’s back; you came home from shaking hands with your in-laws, you wished the bride or groom a mazel tov, and that was that.

Well, a matchmaker, as you know, can talk a wall into marrying a hole in the ground;

It’s no picnic, your Russian grammar; you have to mind your p’s and q’s.

In short, I began getting offers from all over the world: from Kamenets, and from Yelisavet, and from Gomel, and from Lubin, and all the way from Mogilev, and from Berdichev, and Kaminka, and even Brody.

Instead, what he was discovering, as I did, was that there was no such thing as post–Star Trek. In almost every story or review about whatever it was he was doing, almost inevitably there would be a reference or a comparison to Spock. “Tevye is not recognizable as Spock” or his character in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers “is the evil side of Spock.” I’ve wondered if reporters or critics ever realized when they wrote that he had successfully made the audience forget Spock for a few hours that they actually were pointing out that no one had really forgotten about Spock. Forgotten?

After witnessing the pogrom, one of the best-known Jewish authors of the twentieth century, Sholem Aleichem, left the city and the country for faraway New York. Anticipation of a pogrom became a major theme in his last story about Tevye the Dairyman. The subject is also prominent in those of his stories on which the Broadway classic Fiddler on the Roof is based. In both the story and the musical, the city policeman is sympathetic to the Jews. That was true of some policemen, but many stood by during the pogroms, encouraging the violence. That seems to have been the case in Kyiv. By the time the police took action against the perpetrators of the pogrom, it had been going on for two days.

— Шолом алейхем, реб Тев’є! — чую, як хтось каже мені ззаду. — Як ваші справи? Я розвертаюся, дивлюся: знайомий, ладен заприсягнутися! — Алейхем шолом, — кажу, — звідки будете родом? — Звідки? З Мазепівки, — відповідає. — Я вам рідня, себто доводжуся вам, — каже, — троюрідним братом. Ваша жінка Ґолда, — каже, — доводиться мені кровною чотириюрідною сестрою. — Стривайте, — кажу, — чи не доводитеся ви зятем Борух-Гершу, чоловікові Леї-Двосі? Вражений, каже він мені: — Я зять Борух-Герша, чоловіка Леї-Двосі, а моя дружина — Шейна-Шейндл Леї-Двосиного Борух-Герша. Тепер упізнали? — Стривайте, — кажу, — бабця вашої тещі, Сара-Єнте, з тіткою моєї жінки Фрумою-Златою, здається, були чи не кровні кузини, і коли я не помиляюся, то ви середульший із зятів у Борух-Герша Леї-Двосі, от тільки я забув, як вас звати. Ваше ім’я, — кажу, — вилетіло мені з голови. Як же вас звуть? Яке ваше справжнє ім’я? — Я, — каже, — Менахем-Мендл Борух-Герша Леї-Двосі — так звуть мене вдома, у Касрилівці. — Коли так, мій любий Менахем-Мендле, — кажу я йому, — вітаю тебе на зовсім інший лад!