Quotes from Albert Schweitzer

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.

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.

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. --

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.

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.

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.

Das Glück ist das einzige, das sich verdoppelt, wenn man es teilt.

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.

Whatever you have received more than others in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life, all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. You must pay a price for it. You must render in return an unusually great sacrifice of your life for other life.

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