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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELSometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power
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The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.
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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.
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In the darkest night to be certain of the dawn…to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God-this is the challenge and the way.
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How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!
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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.
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Being points beyond itself. Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression “being points beyond itself” may be taken to denote a higher point in space.
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The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.
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Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts.
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A soul can create only when alone.
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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.
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Life is not meaningful…unle ss it is serving an end beyond itself; unless it is of value to someone else.
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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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To sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
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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.
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Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.
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Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law.
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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.
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Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind’s desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.
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People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.
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All that is left is to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.
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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?
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Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man.
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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.
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The utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God’s creation.
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The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL