Quotes About Generosity

The most important thing in anyone's life is to be giving something. The quality I can give is fun and joy and happiness. This is my gift.

The most important thing is you have to want to do something for somebody other than yourself.

You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children.

I feel motivated to give something back to society.

If you do something that's going to get somebody a job, then they'll be able to pay for their kid's school, and then their kid is going to be a doctor, and then that doctor is going to probably help who knows how many other people, so it's very motivating. Much more fun than going to the beach.

I'd much rather leave £2bn to charity, or £3bn or £4bn, than £1bn. That is my motivation to carry on working as hard as I do.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

Honoring the value of competence and steadfastness requires a generosity of spirit and a curbing of the passion for envy, traits that few people value and fewer still cultivate and acquire. Not until there is more of Smith and less of Hobbes in the human heart, will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim

You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.

Leaving the world nicer than you found it, making a commitment to a lifetime of learning, paying attention to what you learn from life's experience so that you are more valuable to others, and being committed to developing the potential of as many people as you can are general purposes that are good to install in the hearts of each one of your children.

A prosperidade ocorreu quando os frutos da produtividade foram amplamente partilhados; a inimizade, a turbulência política e mesmo a guerra declarada foram o resultado de uma desigualdade crescente. É óbvio que a generosidade é a estratégia robusta.

what is the lesson of history, if not that we owe each other more bread, more friendship, fewer lies, less cruelty.

Glory,' he added, reciting carefully, 'is the only commodity that seems to increase the more you spread it around.' I'd heard a similar version of that saying; it started Glory and dogshit are the two commodities . . .

She had arrived in dirty rags and had cooked up a striking outfit for herself, out of relief donations

What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

If I write a book I do it mostly for myself for the child in me and for the adult in me. The criterion for my children's books is: If I were a child would I like it That's very egotistical but it's the same thing with my books for adults. I wouldn't do a book if I didn't want to partake and share. With a book I can do both: I give and I share.

The value of the gifts is in what the act of giving communicates.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.

Apparently he thought he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be . . . what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.

A twenty-year-old man so in love with his mother he gave up five years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change

What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones.

And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.

God's generosity is nowhere better seen than in the gift of patience.