Quotes on Reverence For Life

By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.

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.

Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.

The requirements for our evolution have changed. Survival is no longer sufficient. Our evolution now requires us to develop spiritually-to become emotionally aware and make responsible choices. It requires us to align ourselves with the values of the soul-harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life.

What we call love is in its essence reverence for life.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Reverence for life . . . does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful . . . the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many. . . . It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used to failing.

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.