Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harold S. Kushner
Prayer
Persuade
Making
Santa
Means
List
Everything
Lists
Mean
Confused
Trying
God
Believe
Sorry
Deserve
Claus

More quotes by Harold S. Kushner

Image
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
Image
Our responding to life's unfairness with sympathy... may be the surest proof of all of God's reality.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Never attribute to malice or other deliberate decision what can be explained by human frailty, imperfection, or ignorance.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
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
Image
No good deed ever goes wasted.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Everything that God created is potentially holy, and our task as humans is to find that holiness in seemingly unholy situations. When we can do this, we will have learned to nurture our souls.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Our inability to see the beauty doesn't suggest in the slightest that beauty is not there. Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with broad enough perspective to see the beauty.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
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
Image
When you are kind to others, it not only changes you, it changes the world.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Our society puts too much emphasis on finding someone who will love you our culture focuses too much on being loved and not enough on being a loving person.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: Ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to nourish your soul.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
The happiest people I know are people who don't even think about being happy. They just think about being good neighbors, good people. And then happiness sort of sneaks in the back window while they are busy doing good.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain I don't want to have to deal with a God like that...My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of...and we care very much about each other.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a person who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so there is no longer a split in the soul ... For the person of integrity, life may not be easy but it is simple: Figure out what is right and do it. All other considerations come in second.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Life is like the baseball season, where even the best team loses at least a third of its games, and even the worst team has its days of brilliance. The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people.
Harold S. Kushner