Spiritual Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on Those Who Rekindle Our Inner Light)

“As a rule there are in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from outside, i.e. from some other person. Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow man. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.”— Nobel Peace Prize-winning German-French theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, translated by C. T. Campion (1924)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on ‘The Spirit Generated by Truth’)

“One belief of my childhood I have preserved with the certainty that I can never lose it: belief in truth. I am confident that the spirit generated by truth is stronger than the force of circumstances. In my view no other destiny awaits mankind than that which, through its mental and spiritual disposition, it prepares for itself. Therefore I do not believe that it will have to tread the road to ruin right to the end."—Nobel Peace Prize-winning surgeon, missionary, and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, translated by C.T.  Campion (1931) 

Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on ‘The Spirit Generated by Truth’)

“One belief of my childhood I have preserved with the certainty that I can never lose it: belief in truth. I am confident that the spirit generated by truth is stronger than the force of circumstances. In my view no other destiny awaits mankind than that which, through its mental and spiritual disposition, it prepares for itself. Therefore I do not believe that it will have to tread the road to ruin right to the end.” — Alsatian physician, theologian, humanitarian—and Nobel Peace Prize laureate—Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, translated by Antje Bultmann Lemke (1931)

Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on the Unknown Effects of One’s Own Life)

“Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.”— Nobel Prize-winning physician/missionary Albert Schweitzer, The Spiritual Life: Selected Writings of Albert Schweitzer (1947)

Quote of the Day (Albert Schweitzer, on the Historical Jesus and the One for Today)

“He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, he came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow me!’ and sets us to the tasks that He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And, to those who obey, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings that they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”—Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, quoted in John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)