From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.
Interpretation
True understanding emerges from a journey of complexity to clarity.
This quote by Albert Schweitzer suggests that genuine wisdom and insight develop through experiencing and unraveling complicated ideas or situations. Initially, we may start with naive or simplistic views, but as we delve deeper into understanding, we reach a state of profound clarity, which is a richer and more meaningful simplicity.
In practice
This quote can be used to encourage students tackling complex subjects to appreciate the journey toward understanding.
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.
Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.
By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.
No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.
The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual 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.
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.
The more you are focused on time-past and future-the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
He said true things, but called them by wrong names.
Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you're thinking about it.
Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.
The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.
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