Prayer begins where our power ends.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELPhilosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.
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The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
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Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .
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New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. …
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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.
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To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.
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In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch.
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Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one’s role in relation to all other beings.
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God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
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Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man’s power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.
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Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.
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I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
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It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.
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Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
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We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God?
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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.
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In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.
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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.
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Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.
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It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.
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Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal, and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of his needs.
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There is no answer to Auschwitz…To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.
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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.
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Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL