Preservation of life is the only true joy.
Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world.
We ought all to make an effort to act on our first thoughts and let our unspoken gratitude find expression. Then there will be more sunshine in the world, and more power to work for what is good.
The last fact which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation, and in every way a puzzling manifestation, of the universal will to live.
The friend of nature is the man who feels himself inwardly united with everything that lives in nature, who shares in the fate of all creatures, helps them when he can in their pain and need, and as far as possible avoids injuring or taking life.
Your soul suffers if you live superficially.
Love is the only thing that increases twofold every time it is shared.
My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see.
Thought is the strongest thing we have.
That’s my private ant. You’re liable to break its legs.
Our degeneration, when it is traced back to its origin in our view of the world really consists in the fact that true optimism has vanished unperceived from our midst.
If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness.
All people are endowed with the faculty of compassion, and for this reason can develop the humanitarian spirit.
A man who possesses a veneration of life will not simply say his prayers. He will throw himself into the battle to preserve life, if for no other reason than that he himself is an extension of life around him.
Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.
You must learn to understand the secret of gratitude. It is more than just so-called virtue. It is revealed to you as a mysterious law of existence. In obedience to it we have to fulfill our destiny.
In case my life should end with the cannibals, I hope they will write on my tombstone, ‘We have eaten Dr. Schweitzer. He was good to the end.’
When we observe contemporary society one thing strikes us. We debate but make no progress. Why? Because as peoples we do not yet trust each other.
Bach is thus a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads to him.
Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life.