Quotes & Sayings About Charity And Benevolence

There is no truer cause of unhappiness amongst men than, where naturally expecting charity and benevolence, they receive harm and vexation. — Francois Rabelais

This emphasis on the difference between intentions and ultimate results constituted an implicit critique of the Christian and civic republican traditions, and continues to make moralists queasy. Both traditions had stressed the importance of good and benevolent intentions. By unlinking consequences from intentions, Smith called into question the necessity and possibility of elevating the economic behavior of individuals through preaching and propaganda.
Yet just as he transmuted the Christian virtue of charity into the secular virtue of benevolence, on another level Smith preserved the classic republican concern for the common good. Those who could be motivated to devote themselves to promoting the public interest were in need of superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them. — Jerry Z. Muller

The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it 2540 is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: — The Catholic Church

A helping hand is better than a critical tongue. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Service is a smile. It is an acknowledging wave, a reaching handshake, a friendly wink, and a warm hug. It's these simple acts that matter most, because the greatest service to a human soul has always been the kindness of recognition. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Religion, charity, pure benevolence, and morals, mingled up with superstitious rites and ferocious cruelty, form in their combination institutions the most powerful and the most pernicious that have ever afflicted mankind. — John Quincy Adams

Love in your heart gives you the universe in your hands. — Matshona Dhliwayo

A man should fear when he enjoys only the good he does publicly. Is it not, publicity rather than charity, which he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities? — Henry Ward Beecher

To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own. — Abraham Lincoln

It's the Muslims who are dragging the rest of the world with them, in their genocidal dreams of annihilating goodness, creativity, production, inventiveness, benevolence, charity, medicine, technology, and all of the gifts of the Jews. Our goodness makes them ill. — Pamela Geller

The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer. — Mahatma Gandhi

Mankind was my business ... charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. — Charles Dickens

A sweet soul will take you further than a sweet tongue. — Matshona Dhliwayo

God leaves footprints wherever He goes;
love alone uncovers them. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power ... — Aldous Huxley

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. — Abraham Lincoln

What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice. — John Ruskin

Stars shine even for those who refuse to look up. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The instructive admonitions, "give an account of thy stewardship," - "occupy till I come;" are forgotten. Thus the generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. — William Wilberforce

Dress yourself in the silks of benevolence because kindness makes you beautiful. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And now, it turns out that our mother's name means benevolence and generosity to people as objects of love! This is both a unique and beautiful name, Charity. "It was one of life's cruel ironies," I thought, "that a midwife, or whoever filled in the documents, must have known our mom's name. I suppose she had a lot of fun naming us Hope and Faith! Or, on the contrary, she sympathized. — Igor Eliseev

Miranda nods, because she knows that to be true: noble people don't do things for the money, they simply have money, and that's what allows they to be noble. They don't really have to think about it much; they sprout benevolent acts the way trees sprout leaves. — Margaret Atwood

Choose altruism, because selfishism is a lonely, cold, dark hole. — Richelle E. Goodrich

A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheerfully assisted by the alms of their more opulent brethren. Such an institution, which paid less regard to the merit than to the distress of the object, very materially conduced to the progress of Christianity. The Pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of future protection allured into its hospitable bosom many of those unhappy persons whom the neglect of the world would have abandonned to the miseries of want, of sickness, and of old age. There is some reason likewise to believe, that great numbers of infants, who, according to the inhuman practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure. — Edward Gibbon

The humanitarian is a treasure hunter seeking gems of remedy and appreciation. — Richelle E. Goodrich

[T]he blossom of benevolence, of charity, is the fairest flower, no matter whether it blooms by the side of a hovel, or bursts from a vine climbing the marble pillar of a palace. I respect no man because he is rich; I hold in contempt no man because he is poor. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. — Charles Dickens

Charity in the theatre usually begins and ends with people who have a play opening the week following one's own. Their unlikely benevolence is not so much a purity of heart as the knowledge that they face a firing line with rifles aimed in exactly the same direction. — Moss Hart

But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! — Charles Dickens

I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth's appearing. — Mary Baker Eddy

Whoever approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart, searching among them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate spirituality, for charity and benevolence, will soon be forced to turn his back on them, discouraged and disappointed. For there is nothing here that suggests asceticism, spirituality, or duty. We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You have no idea, sir, how difficult it is to be the victim of benevolence. — Zora Neale Hurston

Love poured out multiplies love poured in. — Matshona Dhliwayo

From the standpoint of the upper classes, the system had many merits. They felt that what was paid out of the poor rate was charity, and therefore a proof of their benevolence; at the same time, wages were kept at starvation level by a method which just prevented discontent from developing into revolution ... It was plainly the certainty, derived from the old Poor Law, that actual death would be averted by the parish authorities, which induced the rural poor of England to endure their misery patiently ... it taught them respect for their 'betters'.While leaving all the wealth that they produced, beyond the absolute minimum required for subsistence, in the hands of the landowners and farmers. It was at this period that landowners built the sham Gothic ruins called 'follies', where they indulged in romantic sensibility about the past while they filled the present with misery and degradation. — Bertrand Russell

You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. — John Bunyan

We never think lightly of those who walk with us on our uphill days. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Swann, with that almost arrogant charity of a man of the world who, amid the dissolution of all his own moral prejudices, finds in another's shame merely a reason for treating him with a friendly benevolence ... — Marcel Proust

It makes that a virtue which is not a virtue, and that a crime which is not a crime. Religion consists in a round of observances that have no relation whatever to natural goodness, but which rather exclude it by being a substitute for it. Penances and pilgrimages take the place of justice and mercy, benevolence and charity. Such a religion, so far from being a purifier, is the great corrupter of morals. — Henry M. Field