giving 2 - generosity

One must be poor to know
the luxury of giving.

George Eliot

Blessed are those who can give without remembering
and take without forgetting.

Elizabeth Bibesco
  

Do not inflict your will.  Just give love.
The soul will take that love and put it where it can best be used.

Emmanuel

      
I expect to pass through this world but once.  Any good therefore that I can do,
or any kindness that I can show to a fellow creature, let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Stephen Grellet
(also attributed to William Penn)

  
The essential difference between the unhappy, neurotic type person
and the happy, normal person is the difference between get and give.
The unhappy person is concerned with:  the world is against me, what's
in it for me, what are people doing to me, and so forth.  When your
central theme in life is getting, you usually do get headaches.  But the
happy person is looking toward what he or she can do, what they
can give, what they can accomplish.

Joe D. Batten and Leonard C. Hudson
   
Cheerful givers do not count the cost of what they give.  Their hearts are set
on pleasing and cheering the person to whom the gift is given.

Julian of Norwich
  

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill
  

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We all should give what we have decided in our hearts to give,
not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

2 Corinthians 9:7
  

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all;
but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.

Martin Luther
  
The Golden Ladder of Giving
1. To give reluctantly, the gift of the hand, but not of the heart.
2. To give cheerfully, but not in proportion to need.
3. To give cheerfully and proportionately, but not until solicited.
4. To give cheerfully, proportionately, and unsolicited, but to put the gift
    into the poor person's hand, thus creating shame.
5. To give in such a way that the distressed may know their benefactor,
    without being known to him or her.
6. To know the objects of our bounty, but remain unknown to them.
7. To give so that the benefactor may not know those whom he has relieved,
    and they shall not know him.
8. To prevent poverty by teaching a trade, setting a person up in business,
    or in some other way preventing the need of charity.

Maimonides
  

Of all the dear sights in the world, nothing
is so beautiful as children when they are
giving something.  Any small thing they give.
Children give the world to you.  They open
the world to you as if it were a book you'd
never been able to read.  But when a gift
must be found, it is always some absurd
little thing, passed on crooked. . . an angel
looking like a clown.  Children have so
little that they can give, because they
never know they have given you everything.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

  

Thou that has given so much to me,
Give one thing more--a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

George Herbert
  

  

But what parent can tell when some . . . fragmentary gift of knowledge or wisdom
will enrich her children's lives?  Or how a small seed of information
passed from one generation to another may generate a new science,
a new industry--a seed which neither the giver nor the receiver
can truly evaluate at the time.

Helena Rubinstein
  

One has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life
when one plants shade trees under which one knows full well one will never sit.

Elton Trueblood
  

Not what we give, but what we share,--
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.

James Russell Lowell
  
If all my pain and all my tears,
And all that I have learned throughout the years
Could make one perfect song
To lift some fallen head
To light some darkened mind,
I should feel that not in vain
I served mankind.

Marguerite Few
  

As Coleridge said, "We receive but what we give."  The happy life is a life
of continual generosity in which we go out to meet and acclaim the world.

Gerald Brenan
  
There are those who give little of the much they have--and they give it
   for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
There are those believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving,
    nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks,
    and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

Khalil Gibran
  

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Give what you have. To someone else
it may be better than you dare to think.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Behold!  I do not give lectures on a little
charity. When I give, I give myself.

Walt Whitman
   

Simply give others a bit of yourself; a thoughtful act, a helpful idea,
a word of appreciation, a lift over a rough spot,
a sense of understanding, a timely suggestion.  You take something
out of your mind, garnished in kindness out of your heart,
and put it into the other person's mind and heart.

Charles H. Burr
   

To give and then not feel that one has given
is the very best of all ways of giving.

Max Beerbohm
  
  
Sometimes it seems to me that in this absurdly random life
there is some inherent justice in the outcome of personal relationships.
In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to give.

Sheldon Kopp
  

They serve best who give most of themselves.  Self is forgotten
by the one who serves, for such a one rejoices to see
success coming to others through his or her efforts.

James Cash Penney

  

Receiving and giving are opposite energies that are inextricably linked together
in the natural flow of life, like inhaling and exhaling.  If one aspect of that cycle
doesn't function, the entire cycle ceases to function and the life force cannot
move freely.  If you can't inhale, you will soon have nothing to exhale,
and before long, your body will be unable to continue living.

Shakti Gawain

  
  
The measure of life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Peter Marshall
  

Fill yourselves first and then only will you be able to give to others.

Augustine of Hippo
  

 
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

Amy Carmichael
   
 

A handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty
of forest.  I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high.

Fiona MacLeod

    
   

No person has ever been honored for what he or she received.
Honor is our reward when we give.

Calvin Coolidge

   

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