Explore Quotes by Martin Buber

Let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.

Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.

We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.

Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived.

To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.

If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul.-Rabbi Nachman

All actual life is encounter.

Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers.

No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.

This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being.

Feeling one "has"; love occurs.

Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other…. Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.

God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings.

To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin.

The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes.

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

Play is the exultation of the possible.

The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.