Top 100 Quotes About Generosity
#1. Compassion has more to do with the attitude we bring to our encounters with other people than with any quantifiable metric of giving.
Sharon Salzberg
#2. If you listen closely to the voices of our veterans, you understand that yes, they all returned from war changed, but what never changed is this: They never forgot your generosity. They never forgot the power of opportunity. They never forgot the American dream.
Michael Mullen
#4. I long ago observed that the real beauty of the sound comes from the generosity of the heart.
Marcel Moyse
#5. There is giving, and there is knowingness. Some have generosity and compassion but no true knowledge. Some have knowledge but no self-sacrifice. When both are present, that person is blessed and prosperous. Such a being is truly incomparable.
Rumi
#6. To forgive a friend, one must practice generosity. To forgive an enemy, one must practice empathy. To forgive yourself requires charity. Forgiveness is a sacred act of gallantry.
Mac MacKenzie
#7. Nothing consumes itself so much as generosity, because while you practise it you're losing the wherewithal to go on practising it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#8. Cooking for people is an enormously significant expression of generosity and soulfulness, and entertaining is a way to be both generous and creative. You're sharing your life with people. Of course, it's also an expression of your own need for approval and applause. Nothing wrong with that.
Ted Allen
#9. Alfred Nobel stipulated that no distinction of race or colour will determine who received of his generosity.
Abdus Salam
#10. Generosity is not in giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.
Kahlil Gibran
#11. When you forgive, some deeper, divine generosity takes you over ... When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you.
John O'Donohue
#12. The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before.
Theodore Roosevelt
#13. Generosity is doing something for someone else expecting nothing in return.
Simon Sinek
#14. Through radical generosity, we are awakening in people an in built divine consciousness of His goodness.
Bill Johnson
#15. You can express your generosity in ways that are virtually limitless. This was what I wanted to convey in 'Giving 2.0' - that whether you have $10 or $10 million to give, if you identify the right opportunities and make the most of your resources, your impact can be tremendous.
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
#16. Love is an exchange of gifts,' Saint Ignatius had said. It was in these simple, practical, down-to-earth ways that people could show their love for each other. If the love was not there in the beginning, but only the need, such gifts made love grow.
Dorothy Day
#17. We shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognise the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations.
Plato
#18. I truly believe that generosity begets generosity. You give before you receive.
Josh Garrels
#19. You should either be like the candle that produces light or you live like mirror which reflects it. Pray for love; Sow love, Show love and Share love!
Israelmore Ayivor
#20. Let us pray for all good and faithful priests who dedicate themselves to their people with generosity and unknown sacrifices.
Pope Francis
#21. Generosity is always cheaper than greed.
Jon Acuff
#22. Be generous. Give to those you love; give to those who love you, give to the fortunate, give to the unfortunate - yes, give especially to those you don't want to give. You will receive abundance for your giving. The more you give, the more you will have.
W. Clement Stone
#23. We have had the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice.
John Stuart Mill
#24. Begin to build up confidence and joy in your own richness. That richness is the essence of generosity. It is the essence of resourcefulness ; that you can deal with whatever is available around you and not feel poverty stricken.
Chogyam Trungpa
#25. Positivity in the mind fuels ingenuity.
Positivity in the heart fuels generosity.
Positivity in the soul fuels mastery.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#26. 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.
Rumi
#27. And for the first time he understood. What temptation meant. It stood before him, made flesh and wit and intellect and desire, making its simple offer of everything, unstoppable and consuming for all it's unconditional generosity.
Olivia Gates
#29. Money is not the only commodity that is fun to give. We can give time, we can give our expertise, we can give our love or simply give a smile. What does that cost? The point is, none of us can ever run out of something worthwhile to give.
Steve Goodier
#30. A therapist might suggest my generosity is a way of buying affection. But buying people's love has never been an issue for me. Generally speaking, I don't want their love.
Julie Burchill
#31. We must content ourselves with the mystery, the absurdity, the contradictions, the hostility, but also the generosity that our environment offers us. It's not much, but it's always better than the deadly, defeatist certainty of the paranoid.
Philip K. Dick
#32. It was not the part of His kindly love that he who was to praise God's divine generosity in regard to others should be compelled to condemn it in regard to himself.
Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola
#33. Riches, both material and spiritual, can choke you if you do not use them fairly. For not even God can put anything in a heart that is already full.
Mother Teresa
#34. And yet you take away the one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life of mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman's most marked characteristic.
Thomas Hardy
#35. Students of cunning have consumed their hearts and learned only tricks; they've thrown away real riches: patience, self-sacrifice, generosity. Rich thought opens the way.
Rumi
#36. The wondrous thing about nature, her gift to us, is her wanton promiscuity. She reproduces herself with abandon, with teeming infinite generosity.
Ruth Ozeki
#37. Bernard was duly grateful (it was an enormous comfort to have his friend again) and also duly resentful (it would be pleasure to take some revenge on Helmholtz for his generosity).
Aldous Huxley
#38. When we come into this life, we don't really own anything. And we own nothing when we leave. It is only a lease we have during our lifetime, and it is up to us to make the most of it.
Jerold Panas
#39. Generosity has built America. When we fail to invest in children, we have to pay the cost.
Bob Keeshan
#40. In the School of Life events, situations, and the people you have attracted to be part of your personal experiences are synchronized perfectly in order to teach you the lessons that need to be learned. They show you exactly what is needed to be successful in your Life.
Jacqueline Ripstein
#41. An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction - because it is a gift.
Makoto Fuijmura
#42. There is a deep - and usually frustrated - desire in the heart of everyone to act with benevolence rather than selfishness, and one fine instance of generosity can inspire dozens more.
Xenophon
#43. Proportion thy charity to the strength of thine estate, lest God proportion thine estate to the weakness of thy charity. Let the lips of the poor be the trumpet of thy gift, lest in seeking applause, thou lose thy reward. Nothing is more pleasing to God than an open hand and a closed mouth.
Francis Quarles
#44. We need this city to actually live up to its name-The City of Angels. We need to spread our wings. We need to show that we are more than red carpets, we are more than Hollywood, that we are a city ourselves of open arms. We are a city of generosity and compassion.
Maria Shriver
#46. Let us proportion our alms to our ability, lest we provoke God to proportion His blessings to our alms.
William Beveridge
#48. Love is an activity, not a feeling ... True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish.
Stephen L. Carter
#49. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.
Thomas Browne
#50. If I've learned anything from my past and my present, it's the power of fear. You can give your subjects all the generosity in the world, and still they will demand more. But those who are afraid don't fight back. I know this well enough.
Marie Lu
#51. When in doubt, err on the side of generosity.
Ping Fu
#53. Generosity does give birth to intimacy - but there's a far deeper intimacy when we're generous in sharing our brokenness.
Ann Voskamp
#55. Generosity does not come from wealth. Wealth comes from the flowers of kindness and love.
Debasish Mridha
#56. Oprah Winfrey's global influence is unparalleled. Not only has her generosity and firm belief that education is the key to a better life benefited countless women and children around the world, but her example has also inspired millions of people to give back in ways big and small.
Eli Broad
#57. It touches every aspect of our social lives, our loving and hating, fighting and cooperating, giving and stealing, our greed and our generosity.
Richard Dawkins
#58. The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain De Botton
#59. Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.
Pema Chodron
#60. The spirit of Christmas is - and hopefully always will be - about goodwill and generosity to others and peace on earth.
Nick Rahall
#61. 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?
Howard Zinn
#62. Human cruelty can be infinite. Human generosity can be boundless.
David Mitchell
#63. My father died when I was nine and a half. We were on relief for two years. They call it welfare now, but it was relief then ... I never forgot the generosity of New York.
Larry King
#64. True generosity toward the future consists in giving everything to the present.
Albert Camus
#65. 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.
Michael Lerner
#66. A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God's.
Timothy Keller
#67. Outrageous generosity is a character quality of people who win with money.
Dave Ramsey
#68. It's not just an exclamation, but it's a rejection of everything to do with Christmas, with the spirit of Christmas, with gift-giving, with generosity.
Patrick Stewart
#69. The measure of your success will be the measure of your generosity.
Pope John Paul II
#70. What a tremendous act of generosity on the part of the donors who made this possible and what a tremendous opportunity for all these children in Kalamazoo public schools who can now go to college and chase their dreams.
Jennifer Granholm
#71. 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.
Louise J. Kaplan
#72. I'll sum up the key to success in one word: generosity.
Keith Ferrazzi
#73. (Vice President) Garner has taken his personal smallness, his lack of generosity, and forged it into a political principle. He has no imagination, no convictions, and he substitutes political cynicism for social understanding.
Hamilton Basso
#74. The Devil doesn't make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn't make us mean. Rather, when we're mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.
Tom Robbins
#75. Should we act on our unseen fears before the virtue of human kindness? Who's given us more, the Light's faith or that stranger? And if you choose to reject generosity, then what standing do we have left in this world, or in the hereafter, for that matter?
Janny Wurts
#76. Hearts who struggled worst never gives up on possibilities when finding solutions reaching out for others' loss & despair.
Angelica Hopes
#78. 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.
Laurence Sterne
#80. Appearances, beauty, value and life have their unique mysteries and essence. I prefer that essence to be breathing with humility, honesty, compassion, respect and a timeless love.
Angelica Hopes
#81. You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.
John Bunyan
#82. Your generosity is cosmetic if you don't fully comprehend that the power to give is positively correlated with a concomitant power to deny, and both of these are the privileges of those who live in abundance, and I don't mean money.
Ellen Miller
#83. We must not let the things we can't do keep us from doing the things we can do.
Richard L. Evans
#85. It takes great generosity to accept generosity.
Merle Shain
#86. There is so much obligatory generosity to being a good mother, a good wife, a good friend. Solitude is an acceptable form of selfishness.
Anna Quindlen
#87. The UK public have repeatedly shown enormous generosity to those in need.
Andrew Mitchell
#88. Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
Agnes Repplier
#89. The more he cast away, the more he had.
John Bunyan
#90. Let us be patient with one another,
And even patient with ourselves.
We have a long, long way to go.
So let us hasten along the road,
The road of human tenderness and generosity.
Groping, we may find one another's hands in the dark.
Emily Greene Balch
#91. Give more, don't expect not to be repaid. Give more thanks for what you haven't expected but received!
Israelmore Ayivor
#92. All our relationships are person-to-person. They involve people seeing, hearing, touching, and speaking to each other; they involve sharing goods; and they involve moral values like generosity and compassion.
Brendan Myers
#93. He who accumulates has little. He who gives away has much.
Debasish Mridha
#94. I don't believe we're only motivated by our own self-interests. Often out of crisis comes this enormous wellspring of generosity and motivation.
Josh Fox
#95. Typical Chilean characteristics, such as sobriety, a horror of ostentation, of standing out over others or attracting attention, generosity, a tendency to compromise rather than confront, a legalistic mentality, respect for authority, resignation to bureaucracy, enthusiasm for political argument,
Isabel Allende
#96. I've been so bothered with my property, that I'm tired of it, and don't mean to save up any more, but give it away as I go along, and then nobody will envy me, or want to steal it, and I shan't be suspecting folks and worrying about my old cash.
Louisa May Alcott
#97. When you begin to overlook the routine act of kindness given by a generous & caring soul, you unwittingly halt your blessings
Bernard Kelvin Clive
#98. The hand of liberality is stronger than the arm of power.
Saadi
#100. Of the various kinds of intelligence, generosity is the first.
Gienka Home from the Ball Bearing Plant (1943)
John Surowiecki
