Harold S. Kushner quotes - page 3

Love is not like a buffet line where the person in front of you threatens to take too much and leave too little for you. Love is like a muscle; the more it is exercised today, the more it can be used tomorrow. (Harold S. Kushner)
Many biblical verses are like inkblot tests, revealing more about us than about the text in question. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
God is the One who is with us when we have to do something we don't think we are capable of doing. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
The idea is to find some bit of holiness in everything-food, sex, earning and spending money, having children, conversations with friends. Everything can be seen as a miracle, as part of God's plan. When we can truly see this, we nourish our souls. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Think about it: it is easy to see God's beauty in a glorious sunset or in ocean waves crashing on a beach. But can you find the holiness in a struggle for life? View quote
Harold S. Kushner
You nourish your soul by fulfilling your destiny. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
One man alone can't defeat the forces of evil, but many good people coming together can. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Pain is a part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that. (Harold S. Kushner)
Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
We teach children how to measure and how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
There seems to be something in the human soul that causes us to think less of ourselves every time we do something wrong... And maybe it is good for us to feel that way. It may make us more sensitive to what we do wrong and move us to repent and grow. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
It is because you have the typical American habit of seeing everything as a test. You see the mountain as your enemy and you set out to defeat it. So, naturally, the mountain fights back and it is stronger than you are. We do not see the mountain as our enemy to be conquered. The purpose of our climb is to become one with the mountain and so it lifts us up and carries us along. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
If we put our soul into our work, if, rather than just going through the motions, what we do flows from the deepest part of our being, then after a burst of creativity, we need to replenish our souls. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Our awareness of God starts where self-sufficiency ends. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
You don't have to be religious to have a soul; everybody has one. You don't have to be religious to perfect your soul; I have found saintliness in avowed atheists. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
We tend to take on the coloration of the setting in which we find ourselves. (Harold S. Kushner)
If that were God's plan, it's a bad bargain; I don't want to have to deal with a God like that...My sense is God and I came to an accommodation with each other a couple of decades ago, where he's gotten used to the things that I'm not capable of and I've come to terms with things he's not capable of...and we care very much about each other. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
We don't have to be afraid of dying because it's not really death that scares us. We are afraid of not having lived. View quote
Harold S. Kushner
Life is like the baseball season, where even the best team loses at least a third of its games, and even the worst team has its days of brilliance. The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all. View quote
Harold S. Kushner