Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward people, but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical.

Love . . . includes fellowship in suffering, in joy and in effort.

I look back upon my youth and realize how so many people gave me help, understanding, courage - very important things to me - and they never knew it. They entered into my life and became powers within me.

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.

Our degeneration, when it is traced back to its origin in our view of the world really consists in the fact that true optimism has vanished unperceived from our midst.

Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now - always and, indeed then most truly, when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances.

Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.