Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELSometimes 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.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
-
-
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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA 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
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
When faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
To us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind’s desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
There is no answer to Auschwitz…To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Knowledge-like the sky- is never private property. No teacher has a right to withhold it from anyone who asks for it. Teaching is the art of sharing.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
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 -
To sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL