quotations about generosity
Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, March 15, 1880
You've been so kind and generous.
I don't know how you keep on giving.
For your kindness, I'm in debt to you.
For your selflessness, my admiration.
And for everything you've done, you know I'm bound...
I'm bound to thank you for it.
NATALIE MERCHANT
"Kind & Generous", Ophelia
In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Eat, Pray, Love
Generosity, wrong placed, becometh a vice; a princely mind will impoverish a private family.
THOMAS FULLER
Introductio Ad Prudentium
Generosity is the accompaniment of high birth; pity and gratitude are its attendants.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
True generosity does not consist in obeying every impulse of humanity, in following blind passion for our guide, and impairing our circumstances by present benefactions, so as to render us incapable of future ones.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Essays and Poems
In the intercourse of social life, it is by little acts of generosity and opportunities of doing good, that affection is won and preserved. He who neglects these trifles, yet boasts that, whenever a great sacrifice is called for, he shall be ready to make it, will rarely be loved. The likelihood is, he will not make it; and if he does, it will be much rather for his own sake, than for his neighbor's.
PHILIP FROWDE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The whole effect of generosity is in the love of doing good.
ROBERT FLEMING
attributed, Day's Collacon
Generosity is giving more than you can.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
Sand and Foam
Avaricious men are the greatest lovers of generosity--in everybody but themselves.
G. D. PRENTICE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not Governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future.
P. D. JAMES
The Children of Men
True generosity defers not its gifts.
AR-RUMI
attributed, Day's Collacon
How much easier it is to be generous than just! Men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest.
JUNIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world, is, their finding so little there: generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason that country-men escape the smallpox, because they meet no one to give it to them.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
A single act of generosity has a stronger and more lasting effect than a thousand misfortunes. It is better to trust the redeeming power of charity than to the energies of wrath. One tender look, one generous expression, may create a feeling of cordiality, a tide of happiness, that will circulate instantaneously throughout the greatest multitude.
LYMAN MAGOON
attributed, Day's Collacon
All my experience of the world teaches me that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the safe side and the just side of a question, is the generous side and the merciful side.
MRS. JAMESON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
A Miscellany of Men
Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Being generous is the best way to avoid greed.
JOYCE MEYER
Love Out Loud