Quotes About Service

Everybody makes money for a living, but most of us actually do something that has a point, in addition to just making money. We examine and treat patients, we teach students, we draw up contracts and wills, we write for newspapers, magazines, and web sites, we clean floors, or we serve meals.

I wanted to be of service to the Peace League, and how could I better do so than by trying to write a book which should propagate its ideas? And I could do it most effectively, I thought, in the form of a story.

Not long after I was married, World War II began. My husband John volunteered for the Navy and was sent to Pensacola for training as a Naval Combat Air Crew photographer. It seemed a strange assignment for a young newspaper editor and writer, already exempt, but off he went, saying goodbye to our 18-month-old Johnny and me.

Before my husband deploys, he has a ritual that is familiar to many service members. He sits down with a generously poured bourbon, and he writes letters. One for his adult daughter, Rosalind. One for each of our little boys, Teddy and Antonio. One for his grandma, who raised him, and his family in Texas. One for me.

I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.

Writing checks for charities is necessary and important. But it can't compare with corporal works of mercy, which are infinitely greater.

We are only missionaries for the world, after all, and when our work is done we really don't exist. Do we? Can it be said for anyone?

belongs. I can't afford so much as a footman to scour Saint Petersburg." "You must afford it. It is said, 'One

If I can aid one in distress, If I can make a burden less, If I can spread more happiness, Lord, show me how.

Although people sometimes assume that the happy are self-absorbed and complacent, just the opposite is true. In general, happiness doesn't make people want to drink daiquiris on the beach; it makes them want to help rural villagers gain better access to clean water.

studies show that your happiness is often boosted more by providing

In general, happiness doesn't make people want to drink daiquiris on the beach; it makes them want to help rural villagers gain better access to clean water.

I remember talking to a friend whose parents had been very involved in the civil rights movement. "They always said," he told me, "that you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don't expect other people to react in a particular way.

You should always be selling—not strategizing about selling. Don't test, test, test—that's a game for big companies. Don't worry about being embarrassed. Don't wait to develop the perfect product or service. Good enough is good enough. There will be plenty of time for refinement later. It's not how great you start—it's how great you end up.

Meaning is not creating a cool place to work with free food, Ping-Pong, volleyball, and dogs. Meaning is making the world a better place.

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people, no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.

It's philanthropy, but it's good politics, too. Mighty good politics. The poor are some of the most grateful people in the world. George Washington Plunkett.

CONSERVATIVES IN MODERN America face a chronic problem in running for office. Often believing government to be the enemy, they have to explain to themselves and others why they want to join that enemy.

So remember this; as long as you are willing to be Acceptance-with-Joy and Bearing-in-Love, you can never again be crippled, and you will be able to go wherever I lead you. You will be able to go down into the Valley of the world to work with me there, for that is where the evil and sorrowful and ugly things are which need to be overcome.

In the mountains one involuntarily hears the query: Where shall I send you? And the answer, Send me to serve the beautiful and good!

I can give her no greater power than she has already... don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her and how well she has got through the world, barefoot as she is. She cannot receive from me any power greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart.

Humility is the key to finishing well and passing the torch on to our successors.