Beware of prejudice; light is good in whatsoever lamp it is burning; a rose is beautiful in whatever garden it may bloom.
Interpretation
Prejudice distorts our perception of beauty and goodness in people and things, regardless of their differences.
This quote emphasizes the importance of overcoming prejudices that cloud our judgement about others. It suggests that beauty and goodness exist in all forms and places, and that we should appreciate individuals for their essence rather than allow preconceived notions to dictate our perceptions.
In practice
During a speech on diversity, one might say, 'As Abdu'L-Bah reminds us, 'light is good in whatsoever lamp it is burning,' promoting acceptance of all cultures.
Illnesses which occur because of physical causes should be treated by doctors with medical remedies; those which are due to spiritual causes disappear through spiritual means. Thus an illness caused by affliction, fear, nervous impressions, will be healed more effectively by spiritual rather than physical treatment. Hence, both kinds of treatment should be followed; they are not contradictory.
If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men.
Love gives life to the lifeless. Love lights a flame in the heart that is cold. Love brings hope to the hopeless and gladdens the hearts of the sorrowful. In the world of existence there is indeed no greater power than the power of love
The wisdom of the appearance of the spirit in the body is this: the human spirit is a Divine Trust, and it must traverse all conditions, for its passage and movement through the conditions of existence will be the means of its acquiring perfections.
Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of mankind
The confirmations of the Spirit are all those powers and gifts which some are born with (and which men sometimes call genius), but for which others have to strive with infinite pains. They come to that man or woman who accepts his life with radiant acquiescence.
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.
To be realistic today is to be visionary. To be realistic is to be starry-eyed.
Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.
No principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being.
Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.
Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.
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