Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will.

Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

At 20 everyone has the face that God gave them, at 40 the face that life gave them, and at 60 the face they earned.

Love is the only thing that increases twofold every time it is shared.

We need a boundless ethic, one which will include the animals, too. Until we extend the circle of his compassions to all living things, we will not find peace.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.