Do not neglect to show hospitality to
strangers, for thereby some
have entertained angels unaware.

Paul
    

Hospitality:  a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

      

Hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than
the guest.  The concept of hospitality arose in ancient times when
the reciprocity was easier to see:  in nomadic cultures, the food
and shelter one gave to a stranger yesterday is the food and shelter
one hopes to receive from a stranger tomorrow.  By offering hospitality,
one participates in the endless reweaving of a social fabric on which
all can depend--thus the gift of sustenance for the guest becomes a
gift of hope for the host.

Parker J. Palmer
The Courage to Teach

  

When friends are at your hearthside met,
Sweet courtesy has done its most
If you have made each guest forget
That he himself is not the host.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

   
Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives
and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts.
Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves.  It is the first
step towards dismantling the barriers of the world.  Hospitality
is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.

Joan Chittister
   

In hospitality, the chief thing is the good will.

Greek proverb
   

   

Hospitality is making your guests feel at home, even though you wish they were.

Proverb
   

Let not the emphasis of hospitality
lie in bed and board; but let
truth and love and honor and
courtesy flow in all thy deeds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
  
  
There is an emanation from the
heart in genuine hospitality which
cannot be described, but is
immediately felt and puts the
stranger at once at his or her ease.

Washington Irving

   

Like many other virtues, hospitality is practiced in its
perfection by the poor.  If the rich did their share,
how would the woes of this world be lightened!

C.M. Kirkland
    

   

It is an excellent circumstance that hospitality grows best
where it is most needed.  In the thick of men it dwindles
and disappears, life fruit in the thick of a wood; but where
people are planted sparely it blossoms and matures, like
apples on a standard or an espalier.  It flourishes
where the inn and lodging-house cannot exist.

Hugh Miller
  
   

    
Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

Samuel Pepys
    

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the
wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.  'Tis good to give a
stranger a meal, or a night's lodging.  'Tis better to be hospitable to one's
good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion.  We must be
as courteous to a person as we are to a picture, which we are willing
to give the advantage of a good light.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
   

Hospitality invites to prayer before it checks credentials,
welcomes to the table before administering the entrance exam.

Patrick Henry
   

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Hospitality should have no other nature than love.

Henrietta Mears
  
Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger
can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to
change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.
It is not to bring men and women over to our side,
but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.

Henri J.M. Nouwen
Reaching Out
  

True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each
and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the
stranger on his or her own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by
those who "have found the center of their lives in their own hearts."

Kathleen Norris
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
   

Hospitality is the practice of God's welcome by reaching across difference to
participate in God's actions bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis.

Letty M. Russell
   

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