Quotes About Generosity

I live to feel her fingers move inside of me like this. The bus makes another stop. A fat man climbs aboard, hauling himself up the stairs. I would kill him for one more moment with her fingers inside me. I don’t have to. She gives me my moment for free. He lives because of her generosity. We all live because of her generosity.

The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's generosity? Why regret one's impulsiveness, one's misjudgment of others? The inevitable discovery that someone is selling letters you'd written in trust is simply to discover an obvious human truth: there are those who don't cherish us as we'd cherished them, and had wished to be cherished by them.

These self-appointed deacons in the Church of Latter-Day American Literature seem to regard generosity (of words) with suspicion, texture with dislike, and any broad literary stroke with outright hate. The result is a strange and arid literary climate where a meaningless little fingernail paring like Nicholson Baker's Vox becomes an object of fascinated debate and dissection, and a truly ambitious American novel like Matthew's Heart of the Country is all but ignored.

Keep the change, Gin," McCallister said in a smarmy, mocking voice. "Consider it an early Christmas present." "Aw," I drawled. "A whopping thirteen cents. You're too kind, Jonah. Why, you'd put Ebezener Scrooge to shame with your bighearted generosity.

Remember you love writing. It wouldn't be worth it if you didn't. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back. Remember writing doesn't love you. It doesn't care. Nevertheless, it can behave with remarkable generosity. Speak well of it, encourage others, pass it on.

Among the wealthy, generosity is often merely a kind of shyness.

If there's time for an emergency, why isn't there time for brilliance, generosity or learning?

Generosity knows how to count, but refrains.

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without love is self-centeredness; forgiveness without love is self-abasement; fortitude without love is recklessness; generosity without love is extravagance; care without love is mere duty; fidelity without love is servitude. Every virtue is an expression of love. No virtue is really a virtue unless it is permeated, or informed, by love.

At the core of every religion is the belief that we care for everyone....It's not too late to help a neighbor in need and to do it with the swiftness, expertise, generosity and love that resides in the best of who we are.

Writing is one of the most ancient forms of prayer. To write is to believe communication is possible that other people are good, that you can awaken their generosity and their desire to do better.

Generosity won't happen unless you make it a priority. The best way to make giving a priority is to make it the very first check you write every month. Before the mortgage. Before groceries or clothing. Before saving. Whatever the amount, do it first.

I attribute that to the generosity of people that are in the entertainment business because they are all struggling. All roads seem to come to acting, for certain kinds of people that have a reason for being there. They want to be seen and heard, but there's more to it than that. There's a kindred spirit of struggling to find out, "What is this thing? What are we?" It's those eternal questions. But, in the meanwhile, I've met some wonderful people doing this.

Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful.

Art is the work of a human being – something a person does with generosity to touch someone else to make a change for the better.

Tzu Chang asked Confucius about jen. Confucius said, "If you can practice these five things with all the people, you can be called jen." Tzu Chang asked what they were. Confucius said, "Courtesy, generosity, honesty, persistence, and kindness. If you are courteous, you will not be disrespected; if you are generous, you will gain everything. If you are honest, people will rely on you. If you are persistent you will get results. If you are kind, you can employ people.

Great and frequent reverses can crush and mar our bliss both by the pain they cause and by the hindrance they offer to many activities. Yet nevertheless even in adversity nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.

It is cheap generosity which promises the future in compensation for the present.

Prayer gives us strength for great ideals, for keeping up our faith, charity, purity, generosity; prayer gives us strength to rise up from indifference and guilt, if we have had the misfortune to give in to temptation and weakness. Prayer gives us light by which to see and to judge from God's perspective and from eternity. That is why you must not give up on praying!

I embrace the term 'evangelical,' if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing.

Generosity should never exceed ability.

A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart.

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.

Generosity should begin lightly and deepen later, fro when it is first rich and then lessens, people forget the kindness. Authority should begin strictly and loosen up later, for if it is loose first and then strict, people will resent the severity.

Liberalism -- it is well to recall this today -- is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.

Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Learn of the wonderful heroism of the poor, of the incredible generosity of the very poor

Writing is an act of generosity toward other people.

We can choose the way of compassion, the way of forgiveness, the way of generosity. Or we can choose other paths and those have very real consequences in the world. This is absolutely crucial.

The outpouring of generosity is overwhelming. People across the Lehigh Valley are moved by the images they are seeing on TV and they want to know how they can help.

...I believe deeply that we canot solve the challenges of your time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have differnt stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people.

Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade-we call it globalization-should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?

Lehman uses many conveyances—including the prose poem, the sestina, and curt rhymes—to travel across the writing life of a poet whose instinctive romanticism is always bracing and tough-minded, brimming with a rare generosity.

Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink.

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.

Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.

Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs but generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable.

Generosity toward the lower classes historically has never been an important part of upper-class awareness.

Ryan Murphy just gives new people a shot, and it takes a lot of confidence and generosity to do that.

Abundance is an expansion of energy. Abundance is a form of gratitude, a generosity, a modesty, a bow toward others - what we can give, what we can share, rather than what we can take.

A very common flower adds generosity to beauty. It gives joy to the poor, to the rude, and to the multitudes who could have no flowers were nature to charge a price for her blossoms.

One's performance is often heightened by the brilliance and generosity of other actors.

The key to success is radical generosity.

Make space in your life for the things that matter, for family and friends, love and generosity, fun and joy. Without this, you will burn out in mid-career and wonder where your life went.

To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

Success with a small s is based on accumulation and materialism. Success with a large S is based on the unfoldment of our soul and the generosity of Spirit made manifest by the giving of our gifts.

A good marriage is a contest of generosity.

Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.

It is certainly a good thing always to forgive with generosity, but it is no doubt just never to forget the wrongs received: they belong to the route that leads to inner maturity.