120 quotes
The world ceases to be that which is and becomes that which is available.
It is a submissive world that modern man is in the habit of sensing, and he seems content with the riches of thinghood.
Who Is Man? (1965)
To be human is a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish.
The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
All action is vicarious faith.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.
Who Is Man? (1965)
The search of reason ends at the shore of the known.
The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
The stone is broken, but the words are alive.
The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love, knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light. The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve.
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy Of Religion (1951)
Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man. It is not a psychical quality, something that exists in the mind only, but a force from the beyond.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
To Hosea, marriage is the image of the relationship of God and Israel. ... Idolatry is adultery.
The Prophets (1962)
New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. … Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.
Who Is Man? (1965)
Being as we know it, the world as we come upon it, stands before us as otherness, remoteness. For all our efforts to exploit or comprehend it, it remains evasive, mysteriously immune. Being is unbelievable.
Who Is Man? (1965)
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.
The Sabbath (1951)
To Hosea, marriage is the image for the relationship of God and Israel. ... Idolatry is adultery. More than objective falsehood, it is a betrayal of God; more than stupidity, it is lewdness.
The Prophets (1962)
Denial of transcendence which claims to unveil the truth of being is an inner contradiction, since the truth of being is not within being or within our consciousness of being but rather a truth that transcends our being.
Who Is Man? (1965)
To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
I am an end as well as a means, and so is the world: an end as well as a means. My view of the world and my understanding of the self determine each other. The complete manipulation of the world results in the complete instrumentalization of the self.
Who Is Man? (1965)
Freedom is not a natural disposition, but God's precious gift to man. Those in whom viciousness becomes second-nature, those in whom brutality is linked with haughtiness, forfeit their ability and therefore their right to receive that gift. Hardening of the heart is the suspension of freedom.
The Prophets (1962)
Instead of indulging in jealousy, greed, in relishing themselves, there are men who keep their hearts alert to the stillness in which time rolls on and leaves us behind. … those who are open to the wonder will not miss it. Faith is found in solicitude for faith, in an inner care for the wonder that is everywhere.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave.
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy Of Religion (1951)
He whose soul is charged with awareness of God earns his inner livelihood by a passionate desire to pour his life into the eternal wells of love. … We do not live for our own sake. Life would be preposterous if not for the love it confers.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)