If I could sum up what the Bible teaches about giving in one statement, it would be this: Generous living produces emotional happiness.

I would learn then that generosity has little or nothing to do with how much money you have or how far along you perceive yourself to be on your spiritual journey. In fact, I was shocked to learn that being generous has much more to do with being smart, shrewd, wise, and deliriously happy. In a word, I discovered that generosity is genius!

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do to more for the betterment of life.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

The end of money is not ease but the opportunity to perform more service.

The charitable system that does not aim to make itself unnecessary is not performing service.

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.

One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

St Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, spells this out further in the important eighth and ninth chapters, where he urges some of the Christian communities to be generous to others so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return.