222 Quotes by Martin Buber

True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is lived in the past.

We say 'far away'; the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form, 'There where someone cries out: "Oh mother, I am lost." ' The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a seven-syllabled word whose precise meaning is, 'They stare at one another, each waiting for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but are not able to do.

Trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of the relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one's fellow-men the great Love.

I contemplate a tree.I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the suckling of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air - and the growing itself in its darkness.

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

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.

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

He who desires to become aware of the hidden light must lift the feeling of fear up to its source. And he can accomplish this if he judges himself and all he does. For then he sheds all fears and lifts fear that has fallen down. But if he does not judge himself, he will be judged from on high, and this judgment will come upon him in the guise of countless things, and all the things in the world will become messengers of God who carry out the judgment on this man.

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