Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes - Page 2

To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.

Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.

There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation . In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use. In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.

Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?

In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.

The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.

Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.

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 Heschel

It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.

The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals.

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.

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.

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. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.

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.

Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.

We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.

A religious man is a person... whose greatest passion is compassion.

The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.

Few are guilty, but all are responsible.

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

Life without commitment is not worth living.

Life is not meaningful...unle ss it is serving an end beyond itself; unless it is of value to someone else.

The road to the sacred leads through the secular.