It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELWe use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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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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Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
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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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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
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Every little deed counts.
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Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
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The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
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Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival.
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Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.
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Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced.
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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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(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
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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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To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.
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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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When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
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The task of life is to face sacred moments.
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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
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At all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
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People are anxious to save up financial means for old age; they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual means for old age….
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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
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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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To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments.
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In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.
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We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.
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Mundus vult decipi’—the world wants to be deceived.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL