“A religious man is a person… whose greatest passion is compassion.”

This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.

Aeons hence, when of many of our cherished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry will continue to shine.

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.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.

What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

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.

It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men.

The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair.

I am commanded therefore I am.

Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.

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.

When we pray, we bring G-d into the world

What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.

A prophet’s true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.

The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.

Love-incomparably the greatest psychotherapeutic agent-is something that professional psychiatry cannot of itself create, focus, nor release.

The greatest gift for an individual or a nation… was abhaya, fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.

At my age, I’m just happy to be named the greatest living anything.

That was the greatest trick in music that people ever pulled off, to convince artists that you can’t be an artist and make money. I think the people that were making the millions said that. It was almost shameful, especially in rock n’ roll.

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I’m thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho.

I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.