Nancy Pace > Nancy's Quotes

“The cloud is free only to go with the wind. The rain is free only in falling.”
― Wendell Berry

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”
― Wendell Berry, A Place on Earth

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― Wendell Berry

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
― George Saunders

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.

Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity

“The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Source: The Wisdom of Heschel”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
― Abraham Heschel

“Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The Search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

“The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words...the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. the world of things we perceive is but a veil. It’s flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear--filling grandeur.
Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

”
― abraham Heschel

“Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

“Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Prayer begins where our power ends.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power...Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”
― Abraham Heschel

“To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.”
― Abraham Heschel