“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate

We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics.

In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.

feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal

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.

There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation .

Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival.

Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. …I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

Man’s true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.

The degree to which one is sensitive to other people’s suffering, to other (people’s) humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity

Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men.

And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.

I found out that a person named Elizabeth Frazier was living with AIDS at the time, and so I called her up, and she took a meeting with me.

HIV changed my life, but it doesn’t keep me from living.

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the on that you love doesn’t love you.

How is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? I was raised paycheck to paycheck.

The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.

we were raising our standard of living at the expense of our standard of character.