Organist Quotes

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.

What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between [humanity] and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity.

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

For those who sincerely seek the truth should not fear the outcome.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

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.

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

Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim.

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

Every start on an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to succeed.

The destiny of man is to be more and more human.

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

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.

I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him witha stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.

Because I have confidence in the power of truth, and of the spirit, I have confidence in the future of mankind.

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

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.

Not less strong than the will to truth must be the will to sincerity. Only an age, which can show the courage of sincerity, can possess truth, which works as a spiritual force within it.

Let us rejoice in the truth, wherever we find its lamp burning.

The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of animals. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure in killing animals for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration?

No man need fear death, he need fear only that he may die without having known his greatest power: the power of his free will to give his life for others

I too had thoughts once of being an intellectual, but I found it too difficult.

Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

We need a boundless ethics which will include animals also.

Therapy is the boat across the river, but most don't want to get off. Don't blame, forgive, All healing is self-healing

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.

Aim for service and success will follow!

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

We cannot understand what happens in the universe. What is glorious in it is united with what is full of horror. What is full of meaning is united to what is senseless. The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive — it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle. And we must inevitably resign ourselves to this.

Ideals are thoughts. So long as they exist merely as thoughts, the power in them remains ineffective.

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.

I am certain and have always stressed that the destination of mankind is to become more and more humane. The ideal of humanity has to be revived.

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.

From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.

Once a man recognizes himself as a being surrounded by other beings in this world and begins to respect his life and take it to the highest value, he becomes a thinking being. Then he values other lives and experiences them as part of his own life. With that, his goal is to help everyone take their life to the highest value; anything which limits or destroys a life is evil. That is morality. That is how men are related to the world around them.

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.

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

Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.

If you own something you cannot give away, then you don't own it, it owns you.

Don't blame, forgive, All healing is self-healing

Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside.

Bach is thus a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads to him.

A thinking man feels compelled to approach all life with the same reverence he has for his own.

One person can and does make a difference.

The path of awakening is not about becoming who you are. Rather it is about unbecoming who you are not.

My life is my argument.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere... Even if it's a little thing, so something for those that need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.

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.

Kindness works simply and perseveringly; it produces no strained relations which prejudice its working; strained relations which already exist it relaxes. Mistrust and misunderstanding it puts to flight, and it strengthens itself by calling forth answering kindness. Hence it is the furthest reaching and the most effective of all forces.

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.

It doesn't matter if an animal can reason. It matters only that it is capable of suffering and that is why I consider it my neighbor.

Think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.

The ethic of Reverence for Life prompts us to keep each other alert to what troubles us and to speak and act dauntlessly together in discharging the responsibility that we feel. It keeps us watching together for opportunities to bring some sort of help to animals in recompense for the great misery that men inflict upon them, and thus for a moment we escape from the incomprehensible horror of existence.

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.

Whatever you have received more than others-in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life-all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. In gratitude for your good fortune, you must remember in return some sacrifice of your own life for another life.

Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.

Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world.

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

Set a great example. Someone may imitate it.