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Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Abraham Joshua Heschel
Age: 65 †
Born: 1907
Born: January 11
Died: 1972
Died: December 23
Judaic Scholar
Philosopher
Rabbi
University Teacher
Warszawa
Abraham Heschel
Prayer
Living
Inconceivable
Humble
Surprise
Answer
Answers

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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All events are secretly interrelated the sweep of all we are doing reaches beyond the horizon of our comprehension.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The work on weekdays and the rest on the seventh day are correlated. The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath. Aeons hence, when of many of our cherished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry will continue to shine.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one's role in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Wise criticism always begins with self-criticism.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The man who has not suffered - what does he know anyway?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer begins where our power ends.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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In the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.
Abraham Joshua Heschel