Kindness quotes
2.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside kindness — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Kindness and humbleness are really good qualities to possess. But, if you have to use the word humble, it means you're not humble. And if you're not humble to this world, this world will thrust humbleness upon you."
"If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness."
"Kindness which is bestowed on the good is never lost."
"I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it."
"I just think the reassurance and the steadiness and the hands-on kindness can make a huge difference."
"There is no kindness more cruel than the kindness which consigns another person to their sin."
"Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you."
"The young should be dutiful at home, modest abroad, careful and true, overflowing in kindness for all, but in brotherhood with love. And if they have strength to spare they should spend it on the arts."
"It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance."
"And for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the contrary only reinforced his spirit and his resolution."
"Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists."
"We can sit here and talk about all the negativity, which we've done a little bit, but for every act of evil in the world, there are a million acts of kindness. Basically, our nature is to love each other and care about each other, and most of us do that. Most of us have no quarrel with anybody who's living on another side of the planet and who might have a different religious persuasion. It's just these small minorities to the far right and the far left who get all of the news time and print space."
"You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. & great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. & even loved in spite of ourselves."
"So . . . I feel in regard to this aged England . . . pressed upon by transitions of trade and . . . competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon."
"The root of compassion is not empathy; that is kindness. Kindness is great, but it is not the ultimate compassion. Ultimate compassion relieves the suffering that comes from separateness. The suffering that comes from separateness is relieved only when you are fully present with another person, not when you are separately present."
"I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society."
"Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment."
"Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me - the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love - He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions."
"People pay the doctor for his trouble; for his kindness they still remain in his debt."
"The essence of love is kindness."
