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Albert Schweitzer Quotes - Page 8

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What we call love is in its essence reverence for life.

What we call love is in its essence reverence for life.

Albert Schweitzer
Love, Essence, Reverence For Life
Albert Schweitzer (1956). “An anthology”

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will.

Albert Schweitzer
Life, Spiritual, Men
Albert Schweitzer (2014). “Reverence for Life: The Ethics of Albert Schweitzer for the Twenty-First Century”, p.49, Open Road Media

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.

Albert Schweitzer
War, Realization, Matter

We all know how important love is, yet how often is it really emoted or exhibited? What so many sick people in this world suffer from-loneliness, boredom and fear-can't be cured with a pill.

Albert Schweitzer
Love, Loneliness, Often Is

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.

Albert Schweitzer
Strong, Philosophical, Animal
"Memoirs of Childhood and Youth". Book by Albert Schweitzer, 1924.

Every person I have known who has been truly happy has learned how to serve others.

Albert Schweitzer
Truly Happy, Persons, Has Beens

Each act of unfaithfulness toward our inner being is a blot on our souls. If we continue to be unfaithful, our souls are eventually torn apart and we slowly bleed to death.

Albert Schweitzer
Soul, Torn Apart, Unfaithful
Albert Schweitzer (1979). “Reverence for Life”, p.84, Ardent Media

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

Albert Schweitzer
Spiritual, Religious, Fire

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

Albert Schweitzer
Religious, Jesus, Twilight

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Albert Schweitzer
Reverence For Life, Ethics, Morality
Albert Schweitzer, Charles Rhind Joy (1947). “Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology”, Boston : Beacon Press

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Albert Schweitzer
Life, Men, Honor

Thought cannot avoid the ethical or reverence and love for all life. It will abandon the old confined systems of ethics and be forced to recognize the ethics that knows no bounds. But on the other hand, those who believe in love for all creation must realize clearly the difficulties involved in the problem of a boundless ethic and must be resolved not to veil from humankind the conflicts which this ethic will involve us, but allow us really to experience them. To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation this is the difficult task which confronts our age.

Albert Schweitzer
Inspirational Love, Believe, Thinking

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

Albert Schweitzer
Earth, Spirit, Proof
Albert Schweitzer (1956). “An anthology”

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.

Albert Schweitzer
Pain, Lying, Hard Times
Albert Schweitzer (2015). “The Light Within Us”, p.11, Open Road Media

Reincarnation contains a most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe.

Albert Schweitzer
Mean, Reality, Europe

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.

Albert Schweitzer
Animal, Sacred, Plant

Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man.

Albert Schweitzer
Men, Musician, Doe

The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education.

Albert Schweitzer
Moving, Rights, Organization

Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it - a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.

Albert Schweitzer
Integrity, Character, Independent
Albert Schweitzer (2014). “A Treasury of Albert Schweitzer”, p.70, Open Road Media

To the truly ethical man, all of life is sacred, including forms of life that from the human point of view may seem lower than ours.

Albert Schweitzer
Animal, Men, Views
Albert Schweitzer (1966). “The Teaching of Reverence for Life”

Not only is example the best way to teach, it is the only way.

Albert Schweitzer
Earning It, Example, Way

The African is my brother but he is my younger brother by several centuries.

Albert Schweitzer
Brother, Century, My Brother
The Observer, October 23, 1955.

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.

Albert Schweitzer
Life, Ambition, Past

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

Albert Schweitzer
Motherhood, Principles, Fundamentals
Albert Schweitzer, Charles Rhind Joy (1947). “Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology”, Boston : Beacon Press

I always think that we live, spiritually, By what others have given us in the significant hours of our life. These significant hours do not announce themselves as coming, but arrive unexpected.

Albert Schweitzer
Spiritual, Thinking, Soul
Albert Schweitzer (2015). “The Light Within Us”, p.12, Open Road Media

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