Quotes from Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz

Chapter Nine Dissonance in the Book of Psalms

Thus, all the articulated visions of prophecy are nothing more than ways of representing an abstract, formless, spiritual reality in the vocabulary of human language; although, to be sure, there may also be a revelation of an angel in quite ordinary form, clothed in some familiar vessel and manifested as a "normal" phenomenon in nature.

Inspiration as the primary source of artistic creativity is no more than an attractive fiction, for spontaneity plays as relatively minor a role in art as it does in philosophical and scientific thinking.

Normally, routine is the common element of daily life everywhere, the element that prevents man from reexamining his circumstances, because human beings are creatures of habit. People become accustomed to, and learn to live with, not only good things but also those that are – even in their own eyes – undesirable.

In other words, as long as the matter in question is assessed on the basis of the same fundamental assumptions with which one started out, the errors in the account will remain standing until some disaster occurs to reveal the defect.

The more one becomes identified with the Torah, the more does its significance expand beyond particular circumstance.

A pragmatic examination of the way of life that results from obedience to the Torah shows that in the long run, besides offering considerable freedom in almost every area of endeavor, such obedience lends to every act the quality of ritual and makes it seem a direct link between man and his Maker.