Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses reverence for the universe and existence, encouraging humility and awe towards greater realities.
Abraham Joshua Heschel's quote emphasizes the importance of respecting the vastness of the universe and the complexities of existence. It suggests that rather than dismissing or ridiculing the profound mysteries of life and the cosmos, one should embrace them with humility and wonder, recognizing our place within this grand tapestry.
Themes
StarsDawnBeingHumilityAwe
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would be fitting in a speech about the importance of scientific inquiry and respect for nature.
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.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
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.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
We worship God through our questions.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
Similar quotes
I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here.
Philip RothRead
It is, perhaps, one of the hardest struggles of the Christian life to learn this sentence-- "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be glory."
Charles SpurgeonRead
But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming.
Rene DescartesRead
Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.
Alexander PopeRead
Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.
William ShakespeareRead
The difference between a man who is led by opinion or emotion and one who is led by reason. The former, whether he will or not, performs things of which he is entirely ignorant; the latter is subordinate to no one, and only does those things which he knows to be of primary importance in his life, and which on that account he desires the most; and therefore I call the former a slave, but the latter free.
David HumeRead