A Quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Quote Topics

Clinging Endless Faith Heart Pilgrimage

Quote Author

Abraham Joshua Heschel
Polish - Philosopher
January 11, 1907 - December 23, 1972

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

There is a beautiful expression of this in the Chandogya Upanishad: 'There is this City of Brahman, (that is the body), and in this city there is a shrine, and in that shrine there is a small lotus, and in that lotus there is a small space, (akasa). Now what exists within that small space, that is to be sought, that is to be understood.' This is the great discovery of the Upanishads, this inner shrine, this guha, or cave of the heart, where the inner meaning of life, of all human existence, is to be found.

Bede Griffiths

If you went to the headwaters of most rivers of the United States, you'd have a wonderful naturalistic hike or trek, but you wouldn't find a shrine there. At the headwaters of the rivers of India, they are pilgrimage places.

Diana L. Eck

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

Alan Watts

Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.

Alan Moore

My own faith was nurtured by my grandmother and her clinging deeply to her faith when she was dying a painful and slow death from cancer.

Geoffrey Canada

The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That's pilgrimage -- a mind full of journey.

Patricia Hampl

I know that I had not faith, unless the faith of a devil, the faith of Judas, that speculative, notional, airy shadow, which lives in the head, not in the heart. But what is this to the living, justifying faith, the faith that cleanses from sin?

John Wesley

The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.

Huston Smith

I'm going where my heart will take me I've got faith to believe I can do anything I've got strength of the soul And no one's gonna bend or break me I can reach any star I've got faith I've got faith Faith of the heart

Rod Stewart

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

Alan Watts

We are invited to make a pilgrimage – into the heart and life of God.

Dallas Willard

Patriotic feelings will surely swell, prompting proud proclamations of the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice shared by the Framers and reflected in a written document now yellowed with age . . . [F]or many Americans the bicentennial celebration will be little more than a blind pilgrimage to the shrine of the original document now stored in a vault in the National Archives. [Progressive]