When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELGod is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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We 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.
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The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present.
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Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe.
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Man’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
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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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We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
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The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one’s own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
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Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not come all of a sudden when we retire.
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Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.
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Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
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That man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.
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For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs.
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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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And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.
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There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL