Quotes About Generosity

The funny thing is people won't let me pay for things. I'll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, 'Oh no, it's on the house.'

Be just before you're generous.

A child learns gratitude by not getting everything she wants. A child learns patience by waiting. A child learns generosity by sharing and giving. A child learns self-control by having to control herself. And above all, she learns contentment by not being trained to always need more and faster.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

A little kindness from person to person is better than a vast love for all humankind.

Your life doesn't mean what you have or what you get. It's what you're willing to give up.

The Greeks had a word, xenia—guest friendship—a command to take care of traveling strangers, to open your door to whoever is out there, because anyone passing by, far from home, might be God.

Trees give it all away, don't they?

Thank you for the baskets and the boxes. Thank you for the

Kindness may look for something in return, but that doesn't make it any less kind." Perhaps

look for something in return, but that doesn't make it any less kind." Perhaps unlooked-for kindness along the way

Generosity is meaningless to a god, who never suffers shortage or want; courage is meaningless to a god, who is immortal and can never suffer permanent injury, and so on. Our virtues and our dignity arise from our mortality, our humanity—and not from any success in being God.

said that when it happened, the French would pray for the victims, the British would organize their rescue, and the Americans would pay for

a person must pass the lessons learned on to others—or there has been no real gift at all.

I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort—every day—is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received.

All the emptying out is only for the sake of a Great Outpouring.

Clearly, you are participating in a Love that's being given to you. You are not creating this. You are not generating this. It is being generated through you and in you and for you. You are participating in something larger than yourself and you are just allowing it and trusting it for the pure gift that it is.

As the Dalai Lama says, "My religion is kindness; my only religion is kindness.

We have always made it hard for God to give away God for free.

Does the Almighty One operate from a scarcity model of love and forgiveness?

Authentic Christianity is not so much a belief system as a life-and-death system that shows you how to give away your life, how to give away your love, and eventually how to give away your death. Basically, how to give away—and in doing so, to connect with the world, with all other creatures, and with God.

whatever that takes, and then has plenty left over for others. True heroism serves the common good, or it is not really heroism at all.

If God chooses and doles out his care, we are always insecure and unsure whether we are among the lucky recipients. But once we become aware of the generous, creative Presence that exists in all things natural, we can receive it as the inner Source of all dignity and worthiness. Dignity is not doled out to the worthy. It grounds the inherent worthiness of things in their very nature and existence.

Live simply so that others may simply live.