Quote

There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Abraham Joshua Heschel
Age: 65 †
Born: 1907
Born: January 11
Died: 1972
Died: December 23
Judaic Scholar
Philosopher
Rabbi
University Teacher
Warszawa
Abraham Heschel
Training
Prayer
Art
Live
Must
Way
Specialized
Life
Pray
Praying

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Image
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
Image
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?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
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
Image
We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
Life is not meaningful...unle ss it is serving an end beyond itself unless it is of value to someone else.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
People are anxious to save up financial means for old age they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual means for old age.... Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not come all of a sudden when we retire.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information but only for want of appreciation.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
The course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Image
Understanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind. God cannot be sensed as a second thought, as an explanation of the origin of the universe. He is either the first and the last, or just another concept.
Abraham Joshua Heschel