Quotes from Albert Schweitzer

We must never allow the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is humanity's sympathy with all creatures that first makes us truly human.

It is a man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.

Don't stop to ask whether the animal or plant you meet deserves your sympathy, or how much it feels, or even whether it can feel at all: respect it and consider all life sacred.

Any profound view of the world is mysticism. It has, of course, to deal with life and the world, both of which are nonrational entities.

If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness.

Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, ..., there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben" ("reverence for life").

My life carries its own meaning in itself.

World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.

Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them.

Today . . . we know that all living beings who strive to maintain life and who long to be spared pain - all living beings on earth - are our neighbors.

Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world.

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.

Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

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

Think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.

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

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time, but His spirit, which lies hidden in His words, is known in simplicity, and its influence is direct.

In the same way as the tree bears the same fruit year after year, but each time new fruit, all lastingly valuable ideas in thinking must always be reborn.

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.

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

Love is the only thing that increases twofold every time it is shared.

The demands of Jesus are difficult just because they require us to do something extraordinary. At the same time he asks us to regard these as something usual, ordinary.