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We have confused God with Santa Claus. And we believe that prayer means making a list of everything you don't have but want and trying to persuade God you deserve it. Now I'm sorry, that's not God, that's Santa Claus.

Harold S. Kushner

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Harold S. Kushner
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More quotes by Harold S. Kushner

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Forgiveness is a favor we do for ourselves, not a favor we do to the other party.
Harold S. Kushner
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We can endure much more than we think we can all human experience testifies to that. All we need to do is learn not to be afraid of pain. Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don't deny it, don't be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever. One day, the pain will be gone and you will still be there.
Harold S. Kushner
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I am quite confident that the most important part of a human being is not his physical body but his nonphysical essence, which some people call soul and others, personality... The nonphysical part cannot die and cannot decay because it's not physical.
Harold S. Kushner
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Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.
Harold S. Kushner
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Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human.
Harold S. Kushner
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I suspect that the happiest people you know are the ones who work at being kind, helpful and reliable - and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things. It is a by-product, never a primary goal.
Harold S. Kushner
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The path to God is rarely a steady climb upward. We climb, we fall back, and we climb higher again.
Harold S. Kushner
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People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles. But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. Their prayers help them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage that were not available to them before.
Harold S. Kushner
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If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul
Harold S. Kushner
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Our responding to life's unfairness with sympathy... may be the surest proof of all of God's reality.
Harold S. Kushner
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. . .We are here to finish God's labors. . .so that we could be His partners in completing the work of creation.
Harold S. Kushner
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You don't have to be religious to have a soul everybody has one. You don't have to be religious to perfect your soul I have found saintliness in avowed atheists.
Harold S. Kushner
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The idea is to find some bit of holiness in everything-food, sex, earning and spending money, having children, conversations with friends. Everything can be seen as a miracle, as part of God's plan. When we can truly see this, we nourish our souls.
Harold S. Kushner
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One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick.
Harold S. Kushner
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No good deed ever goes wasted.
Harold S. Kushner
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Prayer is simply coming into the presence of God. Because when you come into the presence of God, even the things you don't have matter a lot less.
Harold S. Kushner
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God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different.
Harold S. Kushner
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One man alone can't defeat the forces of evil, but many good people coming together can.
Harold S. Kushner
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When a mentally retarded child is born, the religious question we often ask is, Why does God let this happen? The better question to pose is to ask, What kind of community should we be so that mental retardation isn't a barrier to the enjoyment of one's full humanity?
Harold S. Kushner
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One of the sages of the Talmud taught nearly 200 years ago that God could have created a plant that would grow loaves of bread. Instead He created wheat for us to mill and bake into bread. Why? So that we could be HIs partners in completing the work of creation.
Harold S. Kushner