120 quotes
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
Who Is Man? (1965)
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.
Who Is Man? (1965)
It is a distortion to regard reason and faith as alternatives. Reason is a necessary coefficient of faith. Faith without explication by reason is mute, reason without faith is deaf.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
To a noble person it is a holy joy to remember, an overwhelming thrill to be grateful, while to a person whose character is neither rich nor strong, gratitude is a most painful sensation.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
A religious man is a person … whose greatest passion is compassion.
The rush of reason is an effort of limited strength.
Faith is not the miniature of thinking but its model, not its shadow but its root.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Renewal of prayer calls for a renewal of language, of cleansing the words, of revival of meanings.
The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind's desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
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.
The World's Religions (1976)
We live by the certainty that we are not dust in the wind, that our life is related to the ultimate, the meaning of all meanings.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
The account of our experiences, the record of debit and credit, is reflected in the amount of trust or distrust we display towards life and humanity.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being.
The Wisdom of Heschel (1970)
Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty, and to instill a prayer for goodness in the hearts of all children.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?
Who Is Man? (1965)
In my youth, growing up in a Jewish milieu, there was one thing we did not have to look for and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique.
The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.
Who Is Man? (1965)
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments
The Sabbath (1951)
The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal.
Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found. … Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about.
Being points beyond itself.
Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression "being points beyond itself" may be taken to denote a higher point in space. What is meant, however, is a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.
Who Is Man? (1965)