Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the need for strong moral courage and spiritual boldness in challenging times.
In this quote, Abraham Joshua Heschel underscores the importance of exhibiting moral integrity and spiritual bravery, especially during critical moments in history. He suggests that when faced with moral dilemmas or crises, individuals must rise to the occasion with both grandeur and audacity, embodying the virtues that guide righteous actions. Heschel's words call for a proactive stance in the pursuit of justice and truth, urging individuals to act with conviction and purpose.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speaker might use this quote to inspire their audience to stand up for their beliefs.
More from Abraham Joshua Heschel
All quotes βNormal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.
Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
We worship God through our questions.
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Similar quotes
It is more blessed to give than to receive, and therefore less blessed to receive than to give.
In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again; For I am like the Moon, you will see me with new face everyday.
Salvation lies in imitating Christ, in other words, in imitating the 'withdrawal relationship' that links him with his Father... To listen to the Father's silence is to abandon oneself to his withdrawal, to conform to it.
Opinions about obviousness are to a certain extent a function of time.
It costs something to be a true Christian. It will cost us our sins, our self-righteousn ess, our ease and our worldliness.