Albert Schweitzer's Quotes

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

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

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

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

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

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.

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.

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.

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

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.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

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.

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.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

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

Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

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

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight... the truly wise person is colorblind.

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

Do something for somebody everyday for which you do not get paid.

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.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

Example is leadership.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

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.

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

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.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

He who is brave is free.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

For greed all nature is too little.

If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

All art is but imitation of nature.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

If you judge, investigate.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Life, if well lived, is long enough.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.