Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELIn the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency; remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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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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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.
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Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.
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The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.
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In the darkest night to be certain of the dawn…to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God-this is the challenge and the way.
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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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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.
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The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God
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When we pray, we bring G-d into the world
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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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Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
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All that is left is to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.
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A prophet’s true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.
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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.
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To be spiritual is to be amazed.
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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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Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.
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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.
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Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one’s faith.
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
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Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken becasue it is the result of having been shaken.
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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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Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power
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To answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.
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The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.
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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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL