kindness - helpfulness - helpfulness 2
   

I often wonder why people do not make more of the marvelous
power there is in kindness.  It is the greatest lever to move
the hearts of people that the world has ever known.

Andrew Chapman

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
the people behind the words - our current e-zine - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.

Adam Lindsay Gordon

A single act of kindness may have a long trajectory and
touch those we will never meet or see.  Something that
we casually offer may move through a web of connection
far beyond ourselves to have effects that we may have
never imagined.  And so each of us may have left far
more behind us than we may ever know.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things
even if we do not get anything in return.  It is the joy of our life to
do them.  When we do good things from this inner desire, there is
kindness in everything we think, say, want and do.

Emmanuel Swedenborg

A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship.

The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient,
kindness inevitably reveals itself.  Something deep in the human soul seems
to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it,
and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.

John O'Donohue

Kindness is the beginning and the end of the law.

Hebrew proverb

Kindness is the root of righteousness.  Kindness is the enemy
of cruelty, harshness, rudeness.  It softens the heart.
It opens the door to heaven.

Sivananda

All the kindness which a person puts out into the world
works on the heart and thoughts of humankind.

Albert Schweitzer

Without kindness there can be no true joy.

Thomas Carlyle

One kind word wins more willing service than
a hundred harsh orders or stern reproofs.

Jean P. Camus

Kindness works simply and perseveringly.  Hence it is the furthest
reaching and the most effective of all forces.

Albert Schweitzer

They whose minds are filled with kindness
will never enter a world dark with woe.

Tiruvalluvar

When I interact with individuals around me in thoughtful, caring ways, my actions
become an influence for good.  I know that kindness shared multiplies and
has a ripple effect as it radiates from one heart to another.

unattributed

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead.  People are apt to put it down
to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving
of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured
get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

Honore De Balzac

For most of us mere mortals, trying to love absolutely everyone can feel
daunting.  So most days I focus on just trying to be kind.  Kindness is
human sized and so doable.  Kindness is the country cousin to love.  It
does small things at unexpected moments, opening up doors in windowless
rooms.  If I start with simply being kind--love is usually following along,
nodding its head saying, "yes, that's the way it done."

Carrie Newcomer

Kindness has taken a bad rap in many ways, being associated with
weakness or meekness or labels like "goody-goody."  But true
kindness comes from strength, and is full of life.

Bo Lozoff

helpfulness - helpfulness 2

Utter only the words of which we won't be ashamed afterwards,
which we won't regret saying.  It is easy to discourage, it is far too
easy, all too easy to criticize, to complain, to rebuke.  Let us try
instead to be more quick to see even a small amount of good in a
person and concentrate on that.  Let us be more quick to praise
than to find fault.  Let us be more quick to thank others than to
complain--"thank you" and "please" are small words,
but they are oh, so powerful.

Desmond Tutu
Believe

Many years ago, early in our relationship, my wife, Devers, said something
that impressed me profoundly.  "You are very kind, generous, and caring--
when you stop long enough in what you are doing for it to occur to you.
What you have never learned is the discipline of kindness.  This means
kindness that is not a matter of mood or convenience.  It means kindness
as a basic way of functioning.  It is in you as a potential, but it doesn't happen
without consciousness and discipline."  "The discipline of kindness"--I have
learned to love that phrase.  When I mention it in lectures, everyone seems
instantly to know what it means--just as, I suspect, you do now.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day

Kindness is a spiritual choice.

Bernie Siegel

When seeds of kindness are sown prayerfully in the garden plot of
our lives, we may be sure that there will be a bountiful
harvest of blessings for both us and others.

W. Phillip Keller

Kindness is the redemption of humanity.  The world is in
the mess we observe because we feel separate and alone.
Kindness bridges that gap and dissolves alienation.

Alan Cohen
The Tao Made Easy

Often when we perform a kindness for someone, we do it surreptitiously,
as if it is something to be ashamed of.  That’s crazy!  Humans and animals
learn by watching the actions of others. When you see an act of kindness,
you are more likely to repeat that behavior.  Prime time news programs
designate a disproportionately high coverage to crimes and violence
compared to upbeat stories about loving, helpful kindnesses people
have done for others. I wish they turned their programming around,
dedicating the majority of time to good news.

Bernie Siegel
No Endings, Only Beginnings

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
the people behind the words - our current e-zine - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

There is nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

Alice Cary

My dad did his best to discourage unkind words.  The only phone in our
house--and we had 11 children--sat right smack on his desk in the dining
room.  Every time he'd overhear me putting down someone more popular
than I was (which could mean anyone at high school), he'd scold, "That's
not very nice," loud enough for the person on the other end of the line to
hear.  Or worse, he'd say, "Would you say that about her
if she was standing here?"

Regina Brett
Be the Miracle

Kindness means doing a lot of little things kindly
and always, not just a big thing now and then.

Neville Hobson

The older you get the more you realize that kindness
is synonymous with happiness.

Lionel Barrymore

If we knew the power of kindness, we should transform
this world into a paradise.

Charles Wagner

Kindness is wisdom.

Phillip J. Bailey

There were once many kind people, and even unkind ones pretended
to be good because that was the thing to do.  Such pretense was the
source of the hypocrisy and dishonesty so much exposed in the realist
literature at the end of the last century.  The unexpected result of this
kind of critical writing was that kind people disappeared.  Kindness is
not, after all, an inborn quality--it has to be cultivated, and this only
happens when it is in demand.  For our generation, kindness was an
old-fashioned, vanished quality, and its exponents were as extinct as
the mammoth.  Everything we have seen in our times--the class warfare,
the constant "unmasking" of people, the search for an ulterior motive
behind every action--all this has taught us to be anything you like except kind.

Nadezhda Mandelstam
Hope against Hope:  A Memoir

The development of loving kindness is a demanding practice that requires
time.  However, see if you can cultivate some part of loving kindness toward
yourself, other people in your life, and the natural world around you every day.
As we keep practicing, we begin to see beyond what is best for ourselves, or
for other people, toward what is good for all life that is affected by our actions.
Loving kindness for all life on the earth is the ultimate result of
the deepest understanding of the unity of life.

Claire Thompson
Mindfulness and the Natural World

Kindness does not stop with us; we can extend it outward from ourselves,
like the ripples on a pond, toward our family, friends, and loved ones.  This
is relatively natural and effortless.  But for loving kindness to be genuine,
it cannot just end with the people we know and like; it has to go further,
toward those we do not know and even do not like.  This includes people
we may be having a hard time with, someone with whom communication is
difficult, where negative issues have arisen that are pulling the
relationship apart, where there is anger, resentment, or dislike.

Ed and Deb Shapiro