Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELPrayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not come all of a sudden when we retire.
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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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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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To us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.
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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 do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting.
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Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.
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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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When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
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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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Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence.
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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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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
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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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Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
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God cannot be sensed as a second thought, as an explanation of the origin of the universe. He is either the first and the last, or just another concept.
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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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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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The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
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He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor.
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The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth.
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To sense a ray of God’s radiance in the jungles of history.
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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.
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The awe of God is wisdom.
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Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
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Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL