Quotes from Albert Schweitzer

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.

No ray of sunshine is ever lost but the green that it awakens takes time to sprout, and it is not always given the sower to see the harvest.

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.

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

I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.

Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace.

In the past we have tried to make a distinction between animals which we acknowledge have some value and other which, having none, can be liquidated when we wish. This standard must be abandoned. Everything that lives has value simply as a living thing, as one of the manifestations of the mystery that is life.

The demands of Jesus are difficult because they require us to do something extraordinary. At the same time He asks us to regard these [acts of goodness] as something usual, ordinary.

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.

There are only three ways to teach a child. The first is by example, the second is by example, the third is by example.

The interior joy we feel when we have done a good deed is the nourishment the soul requires.

Everyone must work to live, but the purpose of life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others. Only then have we ourselves become true human beings.

As we acquire knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.

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

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.

The Full Measure of a man is not to be found in the man himself, but in the colors and textures that come alive in others because of him.

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

You must give time to your fellow men -- even if it's a little thing, do something for others -- something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. --

Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside.

Die Liebe stirbt meistens and den kleinen Fehlern, die man am Anfang so entzückend findet.

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand 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.

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.

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.