Albert Schweitzer Life Quotations

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

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.

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

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

There are no heroes of action: only heroes of renunciation and suffering - Out of My Life and Thoughts.

Late upon the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset . . . there flashed upon my mind, unforseen and unsought, the phrase 'Reverence for Life'.

Reverence for life . . . does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful . . . the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many. . . . It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.

My life carries its own meaning in itself.

Love . . . includes fellowship in suffering, in joy and in effort.

Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.

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.

The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: 'I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live

I am life that with to live in the midst of other life that wills to live.

The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.

It is good to maintain and cherish life; it is evil to destroy and to cheek life

It is our duty to share and maintain life. Reverence concerning all life in the greatest commandment in its most elementary form. Or expressed in negative terms : Thou shalt not kill. We take this prohibition so lightly, thoughtlessly plucking a flow

Renunciation of thinking is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy. - Out of My Life and Thoughts.

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

Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

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.

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

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

Through the power which we win over the forces of nature we get also a gruesome kind of power over our fellow human beings. - Out of My Life and Thoughts.

Reverence for Life Revisited: Albert Schweitzer's Relevance Today.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life, and that to destroy, to harm, or to hinder life is evil

Any religion or philosophy, which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.