I should have known better—things are better in context. Still, while browsing the religious corner of Attic Books in London, I couldn’t resist picking up what the St. Louis Post Dispatch called “The essential Buber.”

The book is a greatest hits collection of Buber’s best writing, organized into eight neat categories. And they are great. When I read books, I place stars in the margin beside quotations I want to keep track of—later transcribing them into a Word document for safe keeping. I collected fourteen quotes from this book including:

God does not want to be believed in, to be debated and defended by us, but simply to be realized through us. (64)

That peoples can no longer carry on authentic dialogue with one another is not only the most acute symptom of the pathology of our time, it is also that which most urgently makes a demand of us. (122)

The flaming sword of the cherubim circling the entrance of Paradise prohibits the way back. But it illumines the way forward. (175)

Brilliant, right? There’s no question. I and Thou alone is legendary. However, without the philosophically acute arguments into which these gems are set in the source material, they lose some of their impact.

Buber, Martin. The Way of Response: Selections from His Writings. Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, Schocken Books, 1966.