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We pray to you, O God ... for strength, determination, and willpower, to do instead of just to pray, to become instead of merely to wish.

Harold S. Kushner

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Harold S. Kushner
Merely
Praying
Strength
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Wish
Willpower
Become
Perseverance
Determination
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More quotes by Harold S. Kushner

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Do things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are.
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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We do ourselves and others a disservice when we make old age something to be feared...The longer we live, the more life we possess.
Harold S. Kushner
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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
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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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Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.
Harold S. Kushner
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The soul is not a physical entity, but instead refers to everything about us that is not physical - our values, memories, identity, sense of humor. Since the soul represents the parts of the human being that are not physical, it cannot get sick, it cannot die, it cannot disappear. In short, the soul is immortal.
Harold S. Kushner
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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
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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 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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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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That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.
Harold S. Kushner
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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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Many biblical verses are like inkblot tests, revealing more about us than about the text in question.
Harold S. Kushner
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History is written by winners, so most history books are about people who win.
Harold S. Kushner
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When I talk to people who feel this emptiness and lack of fulfillment, I recommend they find a source of balance in their lives. I suggest they find a way to give back to the world in order to feel a sense of completeness.
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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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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But at the end, if we are brave enough to love, if we are strong enough to forgive, if we are generous enough to rejoice in another's happiness, and if we are wise enough to know that there is enough love to go around for us all, then we can achieve a fulfillment that no other living creature will ever know, we can reenter paradise.
Harold S. Kushner
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Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.
Harold S. Kushner