reverence for life

“Lost in thought I sat on the deck barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal conception of the ethical which I had not discovered in any philosophy. Sheet after sheet I covered with disconnected sentences, merely to keep myself concentrated on the problem. Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopontamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase ‘Reverence for Life.’ The iron door had yielded: the path in the thicket had become visible…Now I knew that the world-view of ethical world and life affirmation, together with its ideals of civilization, is founded in thought.” Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought