Great Throughts Treasury

"All real living is meeting."

"Genuine responsibility exists only where there is real responding."

"The soul must not boast that it is more holy than the body, for only in that it has climbed down into the body and works through its limbs can the soul attain to its perfection. The body on the other hand, may not brag of supporting the soul, for when the soul leaves, the flesh falls into decay."

"The great man is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit. So long as a man's power is bound to the goal, the work, the calling, it is, in itself, neither good nor evil, only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil and corrupts the history of the world."

"The word of him who wishes to speak with men without speaking with God is not fulfilled; but the word of him who wishes to speak with God without speaking with men goes astray."

"Man's great guilt does not lie in the sins he commits, for temptation is great and his strength is limited. Man's great guilt lies in the fact that he can turn away from evil at any moment, and yet he does not."

"To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow - is the true love of men."

"Without being and remaining oneself, there is no love."

"He who loves brings God and the World together."

"Revelation does not flow from the unconscious; it is master of the unconscious, it takes possession of the existent human element and recasts it; revelation is encounter's pure form."

"Play is the exultation of the possible."

"Once the concept of infinity has been taken seriously, a human dwelling can no longer be made of the universe. The universe can still be thought but it can no longer be imaged; the man who thinks it no longer really lives in it."

"The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine."

"The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda."

"Real faith… means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be compromised in any formula… Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery."

"Man’s action is enclosed in God’s action, but it is still real action."

"The love of God for this world is revealed through the depths of love human beings can feel for one another."

"“Fear of God”... never means to the Jews that they ought to be afraid of God, but that, trembling, they ought to be aware of his incomprehensibility... Only through the fear of God does man enter so deep into the love of God that he cannot again be cast out of it."

"The world is not divine play, it is divine fate. They that are the world, man, the human person, you and I, has divine meaning. Creation - happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation - we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to Him, helpers and companions."

"The perception of one’s fellow man as a whole, as a unity, as a unique – even if his wholeness, unity, and uniqueness are only partly developed, as is usually the case – is opposed in our time by almost everything that is commonly understood as specifically modern. In our time there predominates an analytical, reductive, and deriving look between man and man. This look is analytical, or rather pseudo-analytical, since it treats the whole being as put together and therefore able to be taken apart… An effort is being made today radically to destroy the mystery between man and man. The personal life, the ever-near mystery, once the source of the stillest enthusiasms, is leveled down."

"There is not one realm of spirit and another of nature; there is only the growing realm of God. God is not spirit, but what we call spirit and what we call nature hail equally from the God who is beyond and equally conditioned by both, and whose kingdom reaches its fullness in the complete unity of spirit and nature."

"Uniqueness is the essential property of man, and it is given to him in order that he may unfold it."

"[The Bible] is the history of God’s disappointments."

"In reality, the main purpose of life is to raise everything that is profane to the level of the holy."

"Peace is the aim of all the world and… justice is the way to attain it."

"Man cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human; he can approach Him by becoming human. To become human is why he, this individual man, has been created."

"There is no rung of being on which we cannot find the holiness of God everywhere and at all times."

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."

"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings."

"Through the Thou a person becomes I."

"The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes."

"I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience."

"When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light."

"For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it."

"There are three principles in a man's being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say."

"When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them."

"Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique....If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born."

"Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved."

"That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. But this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals the mystery to me. He that forgets all being caused as he decides from the depths, he that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance--this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of his freedom. It is not his limit but his completion; freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate--with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light--looks like grace itself."

"No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur."

"Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity."

"As I actualize, I uncover."

"To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin."

"There is genuine dialogue - no matter whether spoken or silent - where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them. There is technical dialogue, which is prompted solely by the need of objective understanding. And there is monologue disguised as dialogue, in which two or men, meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources."

"Man’s threefold living relation is: 1. His relation to the world and to things; 2. His relation to men – both individuals and to the many; 3. His relationship to the mystery of being – which is dimly apparent through all this but infinitely transcends it – which the philosopher calls the absolute and the believer calls God, and which cannot in fact be eliminated from the situation even by a man who rejects both designations.”"

"Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained—in success—and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man's highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation."

"On the far side of the subjective, on this side of the objective, on the narrow ridge where I and Thou meet, there is the realm of 'between'. This reality, whose disclosure has begun in our time, shows the way, leading beyond individualism and collectivism and collectivism, for the life of future generations. Here the genuine third alternative is indicated, the knowledge of which will help to bring about the genuine person again and to establish genuine community."

"The narrow ridge is the meeting place of the We. This is where man can meet man in community. Any only men who are capable of truly saying 'Thou' to one another can truly say 'We' with one another. If each guards the narrow ridge within himself and keeps it intact, this meeting can take place."

"Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others."

"Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself."