Buber Quotes

“But when a man draws a lifeless thing into his passionate longing for dialogue, lending it independence and as it were a soul, then there may dawn in him the presentiment of a world-wide dialogue with the world-happening that steps up to him even in his environment, which consists partially of things. Or do you seriously think that the giving and taking of signs halts on the threshold of that business where an honest and open spirit is found?”

“Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself - this is called Lucifer.”

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

“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.”

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

“But a person, I would say, is an individual living really with the world. And 'with' the world, I don't mean in the world- just in real contact, in real reciprocity with the world in all the points in which the world can meet man.”

“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”

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

“Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.”

“We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.”