logo

Quotes About Service

That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible . . . and to serve others as much as possible.
~ Leo Tolstoy
there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the results of their deeds should not fall on any one of them individually.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Oh no, Papa, Kitty objected warmly. Varenka adores her. And besides, she does so much good! Ask anyone you like! Everybody knows her and Aline Stah. Perhaps, he said, pressing her arm with his elbow. But it is better to do good so that, ask whom you will, no one knows anything about it.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people.
~ Leo Tolstoy
In the service, especially in the complicated situation such as this, it is difficult not to say impossible, to follow any one straight path without risking mistakes and without accepting responsibility, but once a path seems to be the right one I must follow it, happen what may.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Here's what the happiness is: it's living for the others.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural and essential official duty—so familiar to everyone in the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders—that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of his existence—and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the races and in the summer villas.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The most important and necessary human deed, for both doer and recipient, are those of which he does not see the results.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Stephan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural and essential official duty — so familiar to everyone in the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders — that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of his existence — and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the races and in the summer villas.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Man lives consciously for himself but unconsciously he serves as an instrument for the accomplishment of historical and social ends.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person.
~ Leo Tolstoy
All this was as it should be, because welfare and happiness of the world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse universe the assistence.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The only certain happiness in life is to live for others.
~ Leo Tolstoy
The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world.
~ Leo Tolstoy
sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
~ Leo Tolstoy
when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.
~ Leo Tolstoy
she lives for God imagining that she lives for men..One good deed - a cup of water given without the thought of reward - is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. ..My share of sincere desire to serve God was there, but it was all soiled and overgrown by desire for human praise..
~ Leo Tolstoy