Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Life, Spiritual, Morning

  389 Copy quote

• ...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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Evil, Suffering, Limits

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Harold Kasimow (1991). “No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue”, Orbis Books

  362 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Past, Compassion, Names

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.181, Macmillan

  304 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Dear Lord, Numbers, Grace

  227 Copy quote

• We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Thinking, Asking Questions, Asking

  "SQ : Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence". Book by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, 2000.

  239 Copy quote

• The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Opposites, Evil, Indifference

  181 Copy quote

• In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Guilty, Responsible, Terrible

  205 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Song, Prayer, Legs

  287 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Art, Deeds, Remember

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1983). “I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology”, Crossroad Publishing Company

  226 Copy quote

• Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Evil, Indifference, Silent

  140 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Heart, Bridges

  "The Jewish moral virtues". Book by Eugene Borowitz, 1999.

  227 Copy quote

• When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Bullying, Clever, Kindness

  188 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Pyramids, Hatred

  229 Copy quote

• Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Men, Racism, Hatred

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.86, Macmillan

  233 Copy quote

• Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Faith, Heart, Shrines

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion”, p.174, Macmillan

  38 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Simple, Intuition, Analysis

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1983). “I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology”, Crossroad Publishing Company

  55 Copy quote

• 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.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Space, Trying, Six

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (2005). “The Sabbath”, p.22, Macmillan

  174 Copy quote

• The degree to which one is sensitive to other people's suffering, to other (people's) humanity, is the index of one's own humanity

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  People, Humanity, Suffering

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.46, Stanford University Press

  84 Copy quote

• Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Life, Faith, Gratitude

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.264, Macmillan

  43 Copy quote

• Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Deeds, Sacred Things, Pagan

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ilya Schor (1995). “The Earth is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe”, p.14, Jewish Lights Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• The road to the sacred leads through the secular.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Sacred, Secular

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.76, Macmillan

  25 Copy quote

• Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Business

  28 Copy quote

• To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Mean, Doe, Surrender

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion”, p.141, Macmillan

  23 Copy quote

• When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Kings, Prayer, Legs

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Harold Kasimow (1991). “No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue”, Orbis Books

  104 Copy quote

• Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Song, Heart, Waiting

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion”, p.174, Macmillan

  156 Copy quote

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