“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”

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

We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics.

In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.

feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal

When you envy actors, only envy them for their good roles. Keep in mind they have to do a lot of roles to make a living, and not all of them are good.

Different places. Different ideas. Different people. It’s all hard to accept at times, and change can often be a little scary. But if there’s one fact that I’ve learned from raising a family, from running several businesses, from serving in Congress and now as Governor, it’s that nothing has ever grown without changing.

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.

I’m a living abortion.

Life is full of what-ifs. You can’t let it hold you back. If you do, you’re not really living at all… just kind of going through the motions with no meaning

Biggest affirmative argument I know in favor of ‘If a man die, shall he live again?’ is just the way you feel inside you that nothin’ can stop you from livin’ on.

Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

The basic problem with the new species of global institutions is that they have not yet become aware of themselves as living.