Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes About Prayer

Quotes about: Prayer

• 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 Heschel

  Prayer, Heart, Bridges

  "The Jewish moral virtues". Book by Eugene Borowitz, 1999.

• For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Song, Prayer, Legs

• Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Pyramids, Hatred

• There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Art, Prayer, Training

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.260, Macmillan

• One of the major symptoms of the general crisis existent in our world today is our lack of sensitivity to words. We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken. We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words - an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words - is an essential prerequisite for prayer. By the word of God the world was created.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Our World, Broken

• Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Mindfulness, Emptiness

• Prayer begins where our power ends.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Ends

• Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Home, Self

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.258, Macmillan

• 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

  Song, Prayer, Men

• The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Issues

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1983). “I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology”, Crossroad Publishing Company

• When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Kings, Prayer, Legs

  Abraham Joshua Heschel, Harold Kasimow (1991). “No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue”, Orbis Books

• In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Self, Consciousness

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.342, Macmillan

• Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Humble, Answers

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.341, Macmillan

• We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Self, Different

  "Man's Quest For God: Studies In Prayer And Symbolism". Book by Abraham Joshua Heschel, p. 7, 1954.

• The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Issues, Have Faith

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.107, Macmillan

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