Quotes from Albert Schweitzer

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.

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.

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.

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.

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").

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

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.

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.