One need ask only ‘What for? What am I to unify my being for?’ The reply is: Not for my own sake.
If we had the power over the ends of the earth, it would not give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet devoted relationship to nearby life can give us.
To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover...
The ones who count are those persons who – though they may be of little renown – respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.
If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul.-Rabbi Nachman.
You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way – it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of Heaven.
Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself.
Jedes geeinzelte Du ist ein Durchblick zu ihm. Durch jedes geeinzelte Du spricht das Grundwort das Ewige an. Every particularThou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particularThou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou. 164.
In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself.
This is the risk: the primary word can only be spoken with the whole being. He who gives himself to it may withhold nothing of himself.
The work produced is a thing among things, able to be experienced and described as a sum of qualities. But from time to time it can face the receptive beholder in its whole embodied form.
Nothing can doom man but the belief in doom, for this prevents the movement of return.
The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It.
What has to be given up is not the I, as most mystics suppose: this I is indispensable for any relationship, including the highest, which always presupposes an I and You.
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.
The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou.
As I actualize, I uncover.
All actual life is encounter.
This is the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form...
Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament.
As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.