I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELI am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELI 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 HESCHELThe road to the sacred leads through the secular.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWorship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELGod is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThere are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation .
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words – an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words – is an essential prerequisite for prayer.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELUnderstanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELI did not ask for success; I asked for wonder.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELReligion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELIt is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELGod cannot be sensed as a second thought, as an explanation of the origin of the universe. He is either the first and the last, or just another concept.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL