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How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!

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
Earth
Men
Embarrassing
Miracle
Greatest
Understand

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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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
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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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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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We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The true meaning of existence is disclosed in moments of living in the presence of God
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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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God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
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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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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Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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We must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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In the darkest night to be certain of the dawn...to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God-this is the challenge and the way.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
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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There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation . In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use. In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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