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
God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
I would say about individuals, A Individual dies when they cease to to be surprised. I am surprised every morning when I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I don't accomodate, I don't accomodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
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
We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. ... The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
I did not ask for success I asked for wonder.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Faith like Job's cannot be shaken becasue it is the result of having been shaken.
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
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
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
Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. ...I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
