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The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.
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
Able
Men
Essence
More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel
The man who has not suffered - what does he know anyway?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
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
God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
A religious man is a person... whose greatest passion is compassion.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The awe of God is wisdom.
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
Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.
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
Prayer begins where our power ends.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
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
God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
A prophet's true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
