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

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.

By the word of God the world was created.

It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.

The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.

A soul can create only when alone.

Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.

The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt.

In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty – all are responsible.

Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves, there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness in which time rolls on and leaves us behind.

Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.

In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch.

Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.

to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words…the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language.

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

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

One minute I’m standing at Ronnie Scott’s getting a standing ovation and the next minute, I’m on a marble slab

Basically, as a kid I grew up to a lot of good music, and part of my appreciation for music, from being a small child, was appreciating Jamaican music.

I just appreciate still having the longevity that I’ve had in my career.

Thank you to my family, my fans and fans of other teams for their support.

I’ve always been a very rebellious, philosophical person.

So my mother set the foundation for my appreciation for nature and my empathy for other people.

Their silence is enough praise.

You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent, your wife till she’s joined a woman’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.