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Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.

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
Faith
Formulation
Comes
Prior
Soul
Absorbed
Something
Creed
Creeds
Existing
Attitude
Information

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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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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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
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Knowledge-like the sky- is never private property. No teacher has a right to withhold it from anyone who asks for it. Teaching is the art of sharing.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song. Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.
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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You must build your life as if it were a work of art.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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It is not enough for me to ask question I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?
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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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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The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
Abraham Joshua Heschel