Giving quotes
21.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders."
"The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes."
"I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."
"The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will."
"We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have."
"The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data authenticity."
"The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, In whatso we share with anothers need; 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."
"I give you bitter pills, in a sugar coating. The pills are harmless - the poison's in the sugar"
"My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language."
"I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks."
"One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art."
"If we have injured someone, giving him the opportunity to make a joke about us is often enough to provide him personal satisfaction, or even to win his good will."
"Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself."
"The way to connect with voters on the plan is to simply give the facts. Fifty per cent of taxpayers pay 97 per cent of the taxes. By most people's standards, that's already fair. The President is playing the class warfare card because he knows that a lot of people may never hear that particular fact. But it's a fact."
"I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. There are subtleties which I cannot master at all - they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me - and this adverb plague is one of them."
"I had never been able to believe that God would give us poor frail humans only one chance at making it -- that we would be assigned to some kind of hell because we failed during one experience of mortal life. ... So the concepts of karma and reincarnation made logical sense to me."
"The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up."
"I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger."
"O singers, resinous and soft your songsAbove the sacred whisper of the pines,Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs."
