Albert Schweitzer quotes:

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  • Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

  • In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

  • The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

  • At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

  • Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

  • Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

  • The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

  • One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

  • A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

  • Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

  • Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

  • Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

  • A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

  • Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

  • Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

  • Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

  • There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

  • By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.

  • The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

  • Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

  • Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

  • By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

  • I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

  • As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

  • Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

  • The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

  • Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

  • One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

  • Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

  • The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

  • Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

  • Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

  • A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.

  • Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.

  • The African is my brother but he is my younger brother by several centuries.

  • A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

  • Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

  • The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?

  • Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

  • Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

  • When man learns to respect even the smallest being of creation...nobody has to teach him to love his fellow man. Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

  • Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

  • We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

  • Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

  • If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

  • We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

  • The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.

  • For animals that are overworked, underfed, and cruelly treated; for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death...and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words.

  • Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man.

  • Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

  • Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

  • To work for the common good is the greatest creed.

  • A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

  • Constant Kindness can accomplish much.

  • When we observe contemporary society one thing strikes us. We debate but make no progress. Why? Because as peoples we do not yet trust each other.

  • Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

  • Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.

  • The elemental fact, present in our consciousness every moment of our existence, is: I am life that wills to live, in the midst of life that wills to live.... The essence of the humane spirit is: Preserve life, promote life, help life to achieve its highest destiny. The essence of Evil is: Destroy life, harm life, hamper the development of life

  • The Bhagavad-Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions.

  • It's supposed to be a secret, but I'll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help. And encourage the doctor within.

  • Does my behavior in respect of love affect nothing? That is because there is not enough love in me.

  • A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

  • The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

  • Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.

  • Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

  • Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim.

  • To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kindness that stands behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.

  • Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.

  • Think with great gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

  • We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

  • The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education.

  • To me, good health is more than just exercise and diet. Its really a point of view and a mental attitude you have about yourself.

  • It is not enough to merely exist. It's not enough to say, 'I'm earning enough to live and support my family. I do my work well. I'm a good parent.' That's all very well. But you must do something more.

  • To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted..

  • Those who thank God much are the truly wealthy. So our inner happiness depends not on what we experience but on the degree of our gratitude to God, whatever the experience.

  • An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

  • The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.

  • Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside.

  • There is no higher religion than human service.

  • ...try to tell the people of America about Dr. Gerson's merits and ...results...I wish you the best in your difficult task.

  • Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.

  • What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shakes us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.

  • There is within each of us a modulation, an inner exaltation, which lifts us above the buffetings with which events assail us. Likewise, it lifts us above dependence upon the gifts of events for our joy.

  • Just as white light consists of colored rays, so reverence for life contains all the components of ethics: love, kindliness, sympathy, empathy, peacefulness and power to forgive.

  • There can be no Kingdom of God in the world without the Kingdom of God in our hearts.

  • The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.

  • I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with a stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.

  • We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

  • Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

  • The future of civilisation depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today.

  • If there is anything I have learned about men and women, it is that there is a deeper spirit of altruism than is ever evident. Just as the rivers we see are minor compared to the underground streams, so, too, the idealism that is visible is minor compared to what people carry in their hearts unreleased or scarcely released.

  • Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.

  • Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.

  • Seek always to do some good, somewhere... Even if it's a little thing, so something for those that need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.

  • Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

  • Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?

  • Where possible Paul avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the sermon on the mount, and had taught His disciples the 'Our Father.' Even where they are specially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord.

  • In the hearts of people today there is a deep longing for peace. When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an inner experience with unlimited possibilities. Only when this really happens - when the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of men's hearts, can humanity be saved from perishing.

  • The the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hope are optimistic.

  • It doesn't matter if an animal can reason. It matters only that it is capable of suffering and that is why I consider it my neighbor.

  • Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world - that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all around me - is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.

  • At that point in life where your talent meets the needs of the world, that is where God wants you to be.

  • Thought is the strongest thing we have. Work done by true and profound thought - that is a real force.

  • I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

  • Reincarnation contains a most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe.

  • Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.

  • Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

  • Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will.

  • If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

  • Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

  • Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing

  • The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil

  • Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth

  • I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end

  • O heavenly Father,protect and bless all thingsthat have breath: guard themfrom all evil and let them sleep in peace.

  • He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.

  • Bauer's 'Criticism of the Gospel History' is worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus, because his work, as we are only now coming to recognise, after half a century, is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found.

  • True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: 'I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live

  • Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always.

  • If you love something so much let it go. If it comes back it was meant to be; if it doesn't it never was

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