We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.

others good generosity

About W. H. Auden

Portrait of W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden ( WIST-ən HYOO AWD-ən; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems...

More quotations from W. H. Auden

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Routine in an intelligent person is a sign of ambition.

intelligence ambition routine

May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that "faith" is even more difficult for Him than it is for us?

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

In order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character; that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.

love character weakness good desire medicine doctor well-wishing

More quotations tagged with “generosity”

Stop thinking this is all there is.… Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counter-balancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral.… Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel.… Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume; right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious… there's your opening. Remember magic. And, finally, believe you are part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable.

—Mark Morford

war humanity beauty religion change world art temptation generosity magic resistance environment fatalism

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.

—Eleanor Roosevelt

love life fear pain death generosity

The world is full of hundreds of beautiful things we can never possibly have time to discover, and there is no time to be unkind or envious or ungenerous, and no sense in enslaving the mind to the trivialities of the moment. For you can be equal to the greatness of life only by marching with it; not by seeking love but by giving it, nor seeking to be understood but learning to understand. And when it is all over, there will be an agony of remorse because one spared the effort and did not make more of that little span of opportunity; and knowing reality at last, who knows but that one will look back with unassuageable regret upon one's pitiful little faith.

—Vivienne de Watteville

We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.

—Bernard Meltzer

love giving generosity

What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?

—Jacques Lacan

love romance universe generosity

History

3 Dec 2014 Added