Giving quotes
21.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside giving — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"That's just what a woman is. She thinks she knows what's good for a man, and she's going to see he gets it; and no matter if he's starving, he may sit and whistle for what he needs, while she's got him, and is giving him what's good for him."
"Passion is what gives sense to our life."
"If you utilize obstacles properly, then they strengthen your courage, and they also give you more intelligence, more wisdom."
"The more adept we become at cultivating an altruistic attitude, the happier we will feel and the more comfortable will be the atmosphere around us. But if our emotions fluctuate wildly and we easily give in to hatred and jealousy, even our friends will avoid us. So even for people with no spiritual beliefs, it is important to have a peaceful mind."
"If we can refrain from harming others in our actions & words, we can start to give serious attention to actively doing good."
"The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of happiness."
"The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gifts...Thus a heavy task is laid upon Gift-love. It must work toward its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say 'They need me no longer' should be our reward. But the instinct, simply in its own nature, has no power to fulfill this law."
"Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give."
"Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible."
"The only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. Our charities should pinch and hamper us. If we live at the same level of affluence as other people who have our level of income, we are probably giving away too little."
"At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it."
"You have no idea what an appetite it gives one, being executed."
"and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end."
"Edmund, give a special goodbye to Trumpkin for me. He's been a brick."
"But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself."
"Of course, we are to pray for spiritual awakening, and in various ways we can do something toward it. But we must remember that neither Paul nor Apollos gives the increase."
"I gave you seven children, but now you want to give them back."
"Giving does not impoverish us nor does withholding enrich us."
"You have to appear wiser and more prudent than is required by the people you are dealing with if you want to give a high opinion of yourself."
"I [give] maybe the long-winded speeches that not everybody reads, but I can also do a slow jam on Jimmy Fallon better than most."
