Man’s true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELTo sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.
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Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?
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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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When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
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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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There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.
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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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Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
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When we pray, we bring G-d into the world
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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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Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method
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Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.
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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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Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man’s power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.
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Prayer begins where our power ends.
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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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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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The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.
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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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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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Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man.
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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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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.
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To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.
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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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL