Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power...Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The road to the sacred leads through the secular.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Man is a messenger who forgot the message.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“I would say about individuals, A Individual dies when they cease to to be surprised. I am surprised every morning when I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I don't accomodate, I don't accomodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words...the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. the world of things we perceive is but a veil. It’s flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear--filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel
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