Quotes About Generosity

Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed. In cultivating generosity, we are only oppressing our greed and attachment. This allows our true nature to come out and become lighter and freer.

Satirical writers and speakers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor as they are thought to be. They do winnow the corn, it is true, but it is to feed upon the chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others are also very apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out talent and generosity in others, though nothing but self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine faults. It is much easier for an ill-natured man than for a good-natured man to be smart and witty.

Your generosity is reflected in what you do with your own money, not in what you do with other people's money. If I give a lot of money to charity, then I am generous. If you give a smaller fraction of your money to charity, then you are less generous. But if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.

Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.

Nowhere are the generosity and the kindness and mercy of God more manifest than in repentance.

The generosity of the American public toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami has been reflected in the outpouring of support for the Pakistani earthquake victims.

It is now for the Catholic Church to bend herself to her work with calmness and generosity. It is for you to observe her with renewed and friendly attention.

Noblesse oblige; or, superior advantages bind you to larger generosity.

Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness.

Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.

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.

For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity? Why would you refuse to give this joy to anyone? Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups! They swim the huge fluid freedom.

The opposite of consumption is not thrift - it is generosity.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

Generosity is nothing more seen than in a candid estimation of other men's virtues and good qualities.

Love and generosity are the simplest forms of peace.

As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live--we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love. The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self.

Generosity helps us make a concerted effort to keep the needs of others in the forefront of our thinking. Rich people should not feel guilty, but we should feel responsible. We are called to be good stewards of the resources we have been privileged to manage.

To find gratitude and generosity when you could reasonably find hurt and resentment will surprise you. It will be so surprising because you will see so much of the opposite: people who have much more than others yet who react with anger when one advantage is lost or with resentment when an added gift is denied.

It is not possible, given any degree of optimism and generosity in regard to people in general, to set a time limit on creative reflection or a limitation on the number of people involved in the creation.

We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love.

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

Many messages are just thanking a stranger for a kindness...I love those ones, because I imagine everyone else reading them feels encouraged by such examples of humanity and generosity and tenderness. And if they encourage us to reach out to strangers more often, that's a good thing.

When in doubt, err on the side of generosity.

[God] is perfect not only insofar as He is absolute perfection, defining perfection in Himself and from His singular existence and total perfection, but also because He is far beyond being so. He sets a boundary to the boundless and in His total unity He rises above all limitation. He is neither contained nor comprehended by anything. He reaches out to everything and beyond everything and does so with unfailing generosity and unstinted activity.

Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.

I really cannot get over the generosity of our Tibetian teacher. He said, "Don't punish yourself. You're going to be a student at a university in the north of England. You need to have your experiences and have your fun, and not judge yourself. Don't live in guilt and regret."

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man's general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.

Energy always flows either toward hope, community, love, generosity, mutual recognition, and spiritual aliveness or it flows toward despair, cynicism, fear that there is not enough, paranoia about the intentions of others, and a desire to control.

If you are not generous when it's difficult, you will not be generous when it's easy. Generosity is a function of the heart, not the wallet.

Generosity is the only legitimate selfishness.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

Generosity is, by definition, disinterested.

We men should be ashamed of ourselves. I think 85 percent of men are dangerous to women. We need to change to a values system nested in compassion and generosity, and women have carried that torch throughout history.

The only things standing between you and the compassionate, wise, and creative person you want to be are matters of choice. Your choice. No one can occupy your generosity except you.

Real love doesn't seek to acquire. It gives itself away. Its very nature is that of surrender, service, 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.

It needs as much generosity to take as to give.

America will be a country of generosity and warmth, but we will also be a country of law and order.

Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.

I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me.

God's extravagant generosity toward us compels us to be extravagantly generous toward others.

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

It's not the depth of your intellect that will comfort you or transform your world. Only the richness of your heart and your generosity of spirit can do that

I'm not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished.