Charity Quotes

Two works of mercy set a person free: Forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises.... While my townsmen and women are devoted in somany ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.

One of the things that I encourage for anybody who is interested in their own charity or philanthropy is to start from where you are and what has mattered to you.

Be grateful that the poor man is there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.

Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.

The guiding motive of mankind should be charity towards men, charity towards all animals.

Is it not when the fall is the lowest that charity ought to be the greatest?

So give to the poor; I'm begging you, I'm warning you, I'm commanding you, I'm ordering you.

Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable.

Ah! There you are! he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. I'm so glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?

The best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities-a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source.

The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him

It is my great misfortune that I have to measure your love by the money gifts you give for Daridranarayana.

Those who have much are often greedy. Those who have little always share.

There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.

The greatest giver of alms is cowardice.

The charitable say in effect, 'I seem to have more than I need and you seem to have less than you need. I would like to share my excess with you.' Fine, if my excess is tangible, money or goods, and fine if not, for I learned that to be charitable with gestures and words can bring enormous joy and repair injured feelings.

(While accepting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award) I've been thinking about why you have to get famous to get an award for helping other people...If your name is John Doe, and you work night and day doing things for your helpless neighbors, what you get for your effort is tired. So, Mr. and Mrs. Doe, and all of you who give of yourselves, to those who carry too big a burden to make it on their own, I want you to reach out and take your share of this...Because if I have earned it, so too have you.

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

I deem it the duty of every man to devote a certain portion of his income for charitable purposes; and that it is his further duty to see it so applied and to do the most good for which it is capable.

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else.

Men may have given millions of dollars and fed rats and cats, as some do in India. They say that men can take care of themselves, but the poor animals cannot. . .

Socially prominent people are very fond of disease, because it gives them a chance to have these really elaborate charity functions, and the newspaper headlines say 'EVENING IN PARIS BALL RAISES MONEY TO FIGHT GOUT' instead of 'RICH PEOPLE AMUSE THEMSELVES'.

Do not stand on a high pedestal and take 5 cents in your hand and say, here, my poor man, but be grateful that the poor man is there, so by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself.It is not the reciever that is blessed, but it is the giver.Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect.

We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been "had for a sucker" by any number of imposters but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.

Give now. Somewhere, someone feels crappy. You can help.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

I went to a pizzeria. The guy gave me the smallest slice possible. If the pizza was a pie chart with what would you do if you found a million dollars, he gave me the "Donate it to charity" slice. "I'd like to exchange this for the 'Keep it!'"

Let no one go hungry away. If any of the kind of people should be in want of corn, supply their necessities, provided it does not encourage them in idleness.

Charity is the form, mover, mother and root of all the virtues.

Charity opens the heart.

Charity is that rational and constant affection which makes us sacrifice ourselves to the human race, as if we were united with it, so as to form one individual, partaking equally in its adversity and prosperity.

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.

Therefore, give to the poor. I beg you, I admonish you, I charge you, I command you to give.

I am sure that if somebody is giving a sum to charity, he or she should be encouraged to do so by the authorities because the spirit in which we encourage people to give has permeated our society.

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.

People are marvelous in their generosity, if they just know the cause is there.

Charity: a thing that begins at home, and usually stays there.

I do not give alms; I am not poor enough for that.

Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait and count to forty. To save three quarters, count sixty. To save all, count sixty-five.

All wages are based primarily on productive power. Anything else would be charity.

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all others, charity.

In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person's place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity.

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

Charity never faileth.

Lady, you know no rules of charity, Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.

If for some reason you are unsure where to go, all you have to do is stand there looking lost, and within seconds a helpful New Yorker will approach to see if you have any "spare" change.

I have nothing else to say other than I wasn't corrupt, unfair, or greedy. I was smart when it came to making decisions for my company, and I wasn't greedy. I gave to others in charity and donated money to fund programs. I have nothing else to say.

Objects of charity are not guests.

The Jivanmukta ('the living free' or one who knows) alone is able to give real love, real charity, real truth, and it is truth alone that makes us free.

The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights.'

I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.