Quote collection
347 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record."
"I must forgive without noise or fuss."
"All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it."
"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."
"One person can and does make a difference."
"I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late."
"Thinking about death... produces love for life. When we are familiar with death, we accept each week, each day, as a gift. Only if we are able thus to accept life bit by bit does it become precious."
"The most difficult thing I have ever had to do is follow the guidance I prayed for."
"It seemed incredible to me, that physical courage should be so commonplace and revered, while moral courage . . . is so rare and despised."
"Love is the only thing that increases twofold every time it is shared."
"Thought is the strongest thing we have."
"Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith."
"Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid."
"The greatest living person in the world is some individual who at this very moment has gone in love to help another."
"Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself."
"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."
"For those who sincerely seek the truth should not fear the outcome."
"World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa."
"The spirit of the age is filled with the disdain for thinking."
"The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality."