Quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel

It is, indeed, a unique occasion at which the distinguished word qadosh is used for the first time: in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. How extremely significant is the fact that it is applied to time: "And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy." There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness.

There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.

The body without the spirit is a corpse; the spirit without the body is a ghost.

The Bible is the perpetual motion of the spirit, an ocean of meaning, its waves beating against man's abrupt and steep shortcomings, its echo reaching into the blind alleys of his wrestling with despair.

It is not we who long for a day of rest, but the Sabbath spirit that is lonely and longs for us.

Martin Luther King represents a voice, a vision, and a way... I am convinced that the whole future of America depends on how seriously we take this voice, this vision, and this way.

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.

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.

God's goodness is not a cosmic force but a specific act of compassion. We do not know it as it is but as it happens. To mention an example, "Rabbi Meir said: When a human being suffers what does the Shechinah say? My head is too heavy for Me; My arm is too heavy for Me. And if God is so grieved over the blood of the wicked that is shed, how much more so over the blood of the righteous.

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.

The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.