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There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery 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
Sense
Answer
Moments
Awareness
Certain
Mystery
Indebtedness
Live
Built
Reciprocate
Way
Consciousness
Owing
Men
Answers
Compatible
Upon
Grandeur
Living
Gratitude

More quotes by 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.
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Life without commitment is not worth living.
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The task of life is to face sacred moments.
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For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.
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To be is to stand for.
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There is no answer to Auschwitz...To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray of God's radiance in the jungles of history.
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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We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one's faith.
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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(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender
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