quotations and passages on generosity

Think of giving not as a duty
but as a privilege.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Generosity is not in giving me that which I need more than you do,
but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.

Khalil Gibran

Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out.

Frank A. Clark

To the generous mind the
heaviest debt is that of
gratitude, when it is not in
our power to repay it.

Benjamin Franklin

Generosity consists not
the sum given, but the
manner in which
it is bestowed.

unattributed

To know when to be generous and when to be firm -- this is wisdom.

Elbert Hubbard

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Albert Camus

Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give!
You'll never catch up with a mere hope.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing,
more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

Alexander Pope

You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes
only if you generously consent to share them.

William Blake

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

Albert Camus

Our generosity never should exceed our abilities.

Cicero

There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple
justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part
of the soul raised above the vulgar.

Oliver Goldsmith

Generosity is the flower of justice.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

Anna Brownell Jameson

Generosity, when once set going, knows not how to stop; as the more
familiar we are with the lovely form, the more enamored we become of her charms.

Pliny the Younger

He who gives what he would as readily throw away gives
without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.

Henry Taylor