Seek always to do some good, somewhere... Even if it's a little thing, so something for those that need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.
Interpretation
Strive to contribute positively to the world, no matter how small the action.
This quote by Albert Schweitzer emphasizes the importance of altruism and the need to help others, even if the contributions seem minor. It suggests that the act of doing good is a privilege in itself, encouraging individuals to seek opportunities for kindness and support without expecting any rewards in return.
In practice
In a speech about community service, you might remind the audience of the importance of helping others with small acts.
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.
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.
There are two victims in every abortion: a dead baby and a dead conscience.
I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.
The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.
They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.
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