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“The focus of prayer is not the self. … It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer. Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which we forget ourselves and become aware of God. … Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

As quoted in Judaism (1998) by Arthur Hertzberg, p. 300
Variant: "It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the act of prayer."

“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

"No TIme for Neutrality", p. 107
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 10
The Sabbath (1951)

“The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

“Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of many generations, and effort accumulated over many centuries. … There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory which is the main source of our faith.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Wisdom of Heschel (1970), p. 150

“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 6
The Sabbath (1951)

“In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 5
The Sabbath (1951)

“The prophets never taught that God and history are one, or that whatever happens below reflects the will of God above. Their vision is of man defying God, and God seeking man to reconcile with him.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: The Prophets (1962), p. 168

“To Hosea, marriage is the image of the relationship of God and Israel. ... Idolatry is adultery.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Volume 1, p. 50
The Prophets (1962)