Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Essence
Able
Men
More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel
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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
You must build your life as if it were a work of art.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature in which the attainment of power, the utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God's creation. Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal, and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of his needs.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
A religious man is a person... whose greatest passion is compassion.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law. And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. ... Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
The awe of God is wisdom.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
