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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELNever once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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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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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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There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath.
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When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
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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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As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind.
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It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.
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What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.
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To be spiritual is to be amazed.
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(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
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God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
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This may be the vocation of man: to say “Amen” to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.
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To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.
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The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.
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Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL