Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThis 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.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.
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Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
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Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence.
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Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.
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However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man’s perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency;
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Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
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Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.
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We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God?
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To answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.
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A prophet’s true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.
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We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.
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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.
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How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!
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In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use.
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The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL