Abraham Joshua Heschel
To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.Collection: Real
The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.Collection: Heart
To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.Collection: Ineffable
In 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.Collection: Knives
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.Collection: Praying
When we pray, we bring G-d into the worldCollection: World
There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.Collection: Unique
Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men.Collection: Loyalty
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.Collection: God
Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.Collection: Philosophy
I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.Collection: Ideas
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.Collection: Thinking
This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.Collection: Spiritual
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. the world of things we perceive is but a veil. It’s flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. 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: Lying
I would say about individuals, A Individual dies when they cease to to be surprised. I am surprised every morning when I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I don't accomodate, I don't accomodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.Collection: Morning
Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.Collection: Spiritual
The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Faith
Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.Collection: Deeds
Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.Collection: Loyalty
God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.Collection: Importance
Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.Collection: Motivation
To be spiritual is to be amazed.Collection: Spiritual
Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.Collection: Faith
Knowledge-like the sky- is never private property. No teacher has a right to withhold it from anyone who asks for it. Teaching is the art of sharing.Collection: Teacher
There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.Collection: Gains
To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.Collection: Spiritual
The awe of God is wisdom.Collection: Awe
It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.Collection: Essence
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.Collection: Spiritual
In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrenderCollection: Prayer
Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.Collection: Art
Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.Collection: Wonder
Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.Collection: Recovery
People are anxious to save up financial means for old age; they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual means for old age.... Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not come all of a sudden when we retire.Collection: Spiritual
Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!Collection: Demand
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.Collection: Compassion
There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.Collection: Art
Life without commitment is not worth living.Collection: Love
Life is not meaningful...unle ss it is serving an end beyond itself; unless it is of value to someone else.Collection: Meaningful
(People achieve) fullness of being in fellowship, in care for others.Collection: People
We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. ... The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.Collection: Spiritual
Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. 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.Collection: Cheating
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.Collection: Loyalty
The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.Collection: Men
You must build your life as if it were a work of art.Collection: Art
It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal. It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.Collection: Freedom
We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.Collection: Prayer
(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.Collection: People