Quotes About Spirituality

There is a word that is seldom said, a word for an emotion almost too deep to be expressed: the love of the Sabbath.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

G0d is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe rather than faith is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.

Happy is he who is aware of the mysteries of his Lord.

A world without time would be a world without God, a world existing in and by itself, without renewal, without a Creator.

Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.

sanctification is dependent upon human behavior and attitude.

The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.

We may assume it is God we care for, but it may be our own ego we are concerned with. To examine our religious existence is, therefore, a task to be performed constantly.

The grand premise of religion is that man is able to surpass himself; that man who is part of this world may

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.

God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

As long as man sees religion as a source of satisfaction for his own needs, it is not God whom he serves but his own self.

There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God.

A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time.

God is not in things of space, but in moments of time.

The Sabbath is holiness in time.

A longing for things material is an instrument by which one may approach the love of God; even through coarse desires one may come to love the Creator.

To be a Jew is to affirm the world without being enslaved to it; to be a part of civilization and to go beyond it; to conquer space and to sanctify time. Judaism is the art of surpassing civilization, sanctification of time, sanctification of history. Civilization is on trial. Its future will depend upon how much of the Sabbath will penetrate its spirit.

Just as the Shechinah is in exile, so is the Torah in exile.

Ye shall kindle no fire—not even the fire of righteous indignation.

The great dream of Judaism is not to raise priests, but a people of priests; to consecrate all men, not only some men.