Abraham Joshua Heschel
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.Collection: Religion
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.Collection: Respect
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Failure
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.
Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.
God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance.
God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.
Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
It is not enough for me to ask question; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?
The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.
He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor.
...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.Collection: Evil
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.Collection: Life
Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. ...I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.Collection: Dear Lord
When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; 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.Collection: Past
We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.Collection: Thinking
In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.Collection: Guilty
The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.Collection: Opposites
For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.Collection: Song
Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power...Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Prayer
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.Collection: Evil
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.Collection: Prayer
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. 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.Collection: Space
The degree to which one is sensitive to other people's suffering, to other (people's) humanity, is the index of one's own humanityCollection: People
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine. ... to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.Collection: Simple
How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!Collection: Men
One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We 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. 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. By the word of God the world was created.Collection: Prayer
Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.Collection: Simple
People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. 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.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions. Source: The Wisdom of HeschelCollection: Appreciation
It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.Collection: Soul
Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.Collection: Prayer
All action is vicarious faith.Collection: Action
Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.Collection: Heart
God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.Collection: Father
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.Collection: Creativity
All that is left is to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.Collection: Loss
Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.Collection: Attitude
We worship God through our questions.Collection: Worship
We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.Collection: Spring
Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.Collection: Civilization
The task of life is to face sacred moments.Collection: Tasks
The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present.Collection: Fashion
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.Collection: Rejection
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.Collection: Heart