Martin Buber - God Quotes

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When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which — of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.

Martin Buber
The biblical passage which says of Abraham and the three visiting angels: "And He stood over them under the tree and they did eat" is interpreted by Rabbi Zusya to the effect that man stands above the angels, because he knows something unknown to them, namely, that eating may be hallowed by the eater's intention.... Any natural act, if hallowed, leads to God, and nature needs man for what no angel can perform on it, namely, its hallowing.

Martin Buber
Meet the world with the fullness of your being, and you shall meet God. Of you wish to believe, love.

Martin Buber
Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself.

Martin Buber
To love God truly, one must first love man. And if anyone tells you that he loves God and does not love his fellow-man, you will know that he is lying.

Martin Buber
Nature is full of God's utterance, if one but hears it...

Martin Buber
God is the "mysterium tremendum," that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.

Martin Buber
When a man grows aware of a new way in which to serve God, he should carry it around with him secretly, and without uttering it, for nine months, as though he were pregnant with it, and let others know of it only at the end of that time, as though it were a birth.

Martin Buber
Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.

Martin Buber
And if there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in eternity, came to no decision.

Martin Buber
Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God - such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is now passing

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

Martin Buber
Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless — when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.

Martin Buber
One should hallow all that one does in one's natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul.

Martin Buber
All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him.

Martin Buber
To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.

Martin Buber
How would man exist if God did not need him, and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you—for that is the meaning of your life.

Martin Buber