Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of evaluating our actions and thoughts in relation to spiritual values, particularly those exemplified by Jesus.
Albert Schweitzer's quote encourages us to reflect on our daily contributions to the world versus our spiritual commitments to the teachings of Jesus. It suggests that we should strive for a balance, weighing our worldly engagements and actions against our adherence to spiritual principles, highlighting the significance of both thought and action in our moral lives.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a seminar on ethics to prompt reflection among participants.
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.
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite.
Work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason.
It is good to remember that the goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. In the same vein, my teachings are not meant to acquire followers or imitators, but to awaken beings to eternal truth and thus to awakened life and living.
The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness - an interest in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference.
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