Abraham Joshua Heschel quotes
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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 HeschelSource : "The Jewish moral virtues". Book by Eugene Borowitz, 1999.
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“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 HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (1983). “I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology”, Crossroad Publishing Company
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“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 HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.181, Macmillan
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“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 -
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“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 -
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“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 -
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“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 -
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“The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Telegram to President John F. Kennedy, June 16, 1963.
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“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 HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.72, Macmillan
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“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.264, Macmillan
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“To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Wise criticism always begins with self-criticism.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion”, p.174, Macmillan
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“For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“It is not enough for me to ask question; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Life is not meaningful...unle ss it is serving an end beyond itself; unless it is of value to someone else.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“When we pray, we bring G-d into the world”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (2005). “The Sabbath”, p.22, Macmillan
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“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 -
“We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : "SQ : Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence". Book by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, 2000.
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“God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“Prayer begins where our power ends.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.89, Stanford University Press
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“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Twitter post from Dec 12, 2014
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“A prophet's true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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“There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
-- Abraham Joshua HeschelSource : Abraham Joshua Heschel, Harold Kasimow (1991). “No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue”, Orbis Books
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“God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
“I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.”
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
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