Albert Schweitzer Quotes
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All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it.
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Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.
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I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human. . . . We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom.
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Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life.
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You must not expect anything from others. It's you, of yourself, of whom you must ask a lot. Only from oneself has one the right to ask everything and anything. This way it's up to you - your own choices - what you get from others remains a present, a gift.
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Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world.
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Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
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...try to tell the people of America about Dr. Gerson's merits and ...results...I wish you the best in your difficult task.
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I too had thoughts once of being an intellectual, but I found it too difficult.
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Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them.
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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.
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The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up. That is possible for those who never argue and strive with people and facts, but in all experience retires upon themselves, and look for the ultimate cause of things in themselves.
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Wherever you turn, you can find someone who needs you. Even if it is a little thing, do something for which there is no pay but the privilege of doing it. Remember, you don't live in a world all of your own
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Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good.
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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.
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The quiet conscience is the invention of the devil. No one of us may permit any preventable pain to be inflicted even though the responsibility for that pain is not ours. No one may shut his eyes and think that the pain which is therefore not visible, is non-existent.
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You must learn to understand the secret of gratitude. It is more than just so-called virtue. It is revealed to you as a mysterious law of existence. In obedience to it we have to fulfill our destiny.
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Constant Kindness can accomplish much.
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We are gripped by God’s will of love, and must help carry out that will in this world, in small things as in great things, in saving as in pardoning. To be glad instruments of God’s love in this imperfect world is the service to which we are called.
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If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.
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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.
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Man's ethics must not end with man, but should extend to the universe. He must regain the consciousness of the great Chain of Life from which he cannot be separated.
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Because I have confidence in the power of truth, and of the spirit, I have confidence in the future of mankind.
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Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.
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No one may shut his eyes to think the pain, which is therefore not visible to him, is non-existent.
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Do not lose heart, even if you must wait a bit before finding the right thing. Be prepared for disappointment also, but do not abandon the quest.
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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.
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He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.
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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.
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The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach.
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