Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes - Page 4

Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

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.

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.

The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God

Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.

The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.

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.

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.

Man is a messenger who forgot the message.

To be is to stand for.

Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.

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.

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.

God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.

To be spiritual is to be amazed.

Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.

The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.

To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.

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.

There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.

All that is left is to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.

It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.

The awe of God is wisdom.