Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe worship God through our questions.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
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We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting.
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Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question…awareness of the problem outlives all solutions.
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We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.
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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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To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.
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In the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency; remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.
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When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past
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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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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.
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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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The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.
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Those who are open to the wonder will not miss it. Faith is found in solicitude for faith, in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere.
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The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.
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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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Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
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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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All action is vicarious faith.
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For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving
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The work on weekdays and the rest on the seventh day are correlated. The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired.
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Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one’s role in relation to all other beings.
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Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.
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Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.
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Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
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Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL