How we cite our quotes: Story Number.Paragraph
Quote #7
Why interfere when it's something between children? A lot of good it did me with my older daughters when I gave them advice about their matches! I talked and I talked, I advised and advised, poured out the whole Torah—and who ended up the fool? Tevye! (8.67)
Awesome. So Tevye's two strategies for dealing with his daughters' marriages are: meddle, meddle, meddle; or totally ignore it. No in-betweens for this guy.
Quote #8
To tell the truth, my wife Golde, God rest her soul, was the wisest one of all, if only because she saw what was going on around her, said goodbye to this foolish world, and left it. 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? How did our rabbis say: Regardless of thy will thou livest—man does not take his fate into his own hands, and if he does he gets his knuckles rapped. (9.11)
What a weird bit here. Even though the ending yet again reinforces Tevye's main point about how God is in constant control of everything so just get your hands off the wheel already, the first part about Golde reveals that she was wise enough to actually grab some control back from God and His plans. Sure, it was by dying and all, but still, the language totes makes it sound like it was her own decision to forget the worldly nonsense around her.
Quote #9
What do you say, Pani Sholem Aleichem? You're a Jew yourself who writes books and gives advice to everybody. Tell me, what should Tevye have done? Should he have embraced [Chava] as one of his own, hugged and kissed her, as we say on Yom Kippur at Kol Nidrei, I have pardoned according to Thy word—come back to me, you are my child? Or should I have turned my back on her, as I did before, and told her, Lech l'cho—get thee gone, go back to where you came from? No, imagine that you are in Tevye's place, and tell me honestly, as a true and good friend, what you would have done. And if you cannot tell me right away, I will give you time to think it over. (9.77)
This might be the only time where Tevye actually quotes conflicting Biblical verses to cover both sides of a particular argument. Maybe this is just a way to wink at the idea that Sholem Aleichem is actually the writer who is puzzling out how to conclude the plot of this work—so it really is up to him to imagine himself in Tevye's place, making the decision.