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We do not step out of the world when we pray we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.

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
World
Function
Wheels
Step
Settings
Hub
Steps
Surrender
Revolving
Consciousness
Center
Wheel
Prayer
Setting
Spokes
Living
Pray
Spoke
Self
Merely
Shift
Different
Praying
Precisely

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
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When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
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To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments.
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I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.
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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.
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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.
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The course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.
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Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.
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Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!
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A religious man is a person... whose greatest passion is compassion.
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Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.
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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.
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Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.
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Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal everything is incredible never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.
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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.
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Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
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To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.
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Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.
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Prayer begins where our power ends.
Abraham Joshua Heschel