A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The meaning of life is to live life as it is a work of art. You’re not a machine. When you’re young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, NBC interview with Carl Stern, 1972
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. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender. God is the center toward which all forces tend.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (2002) p. 20
The world is too small for anything but mutual care and deep respect; the world is too great for anything but responsibility for one another.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, quoted by Rabbi Jill Levine, Where Justice Dwells, p.128
When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless
Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (2002): 40.
No one will live my life for me, no one will think my thoughts for me or dream my dreams.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (2002), p.47
The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who are wont to blame others rather than themselves
Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology (2006), p.96
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
