If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.
Interpretation
Losing respect for any aspect of life diminishes respect for life as a whole.
This quote by Albert Schweitzer suggests that reverence, or deep respect, for life is interconnected. If one begins to dismiss or disrespect any part of life—be it nature, humanity, or oneself—this attitude will inevitably extend to all aspects of life, leading to a profound loss of appreciation for existence itself.
In practice
In a speech about environmental conservation, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of respecting nature.
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.
Our obligation to fight pollution traces the roots of its persuasion to that same moral mountaintop from which my father lent his voice to the voiceless. The pursuit of civil equality in health helped build our environmental laws.
The more we can give in our silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life.
Every baby born_x000D_ unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come_x000D_ due in twenty years with interest, an anger_x000D_ that must find a target, a pain that will_x000D_ beget pain. A decade downstream a child_x000D_ screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,_x000D_ a firing squad is summoned, a button_x000D_ is pushed and the world burns.
Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the one that arouses the least pity in the person who causes it.
There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.
If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives.
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