The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.
—Ivan Illich
The degree of loving is measured by the degree of giving.
—Edwin Louis Cole
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, avoiding our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
—Garrison Keillor
What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?
—Jacques Lacan
We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.
—Bernard Meltzer
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
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
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
We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
—W. H. Auden
The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.
—Francesco Guicciardini
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
—Mother Teresa
The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.
—Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
—Gordon Atkinson
Love is always being given where it is not required.
—E. M. Forster
To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh