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 β 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.
Interpretation
The universe embodies both beauty and horror, creativity and destruction, leading to a profound mystery that we must accept.
This quote by Albert Schweitzer reflects on the duality of existence within the universe, highlighting how elements of beauty coexist with elements of horror, purpose with absurdity, and creativity with destruction. It emphasizes the complexity and mystery of the universe, suggesting that acceptance of this duality is essential to our understanding of life and existence itself.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture discussing the nature of existence.
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.
Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.
A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.
There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God.
The sacraments infuse holiness into the terrain of man's humanity: they penetrate the soul and body, the femininity and masculinity of the personal subject, with the power of holiness.
In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.