Quotes about Generosity

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation.

As the Beloved ones, our greatest fulfilment lies in becoming bread for the world. That is the most intimate expression of our deepest desire to give ourselves to each other.

We wonder if we serve better than someone else. We import a drive to achieve into our works of mercy.

Faith is precisely trusting that you who give gratuitously will receive gratuitously, but not necessarily from the person to whom you gave.

Gratitude springs from an insight, a recognition that something good has come from another person, that it is freely given to me, and meant as a favor.

I can see three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood: grief, forgiveness, and generosity. Grief is the discipline of the heart that sees the sin of the world, and knows itself to be the sorrowful price of freedom without which love cannot bloom. I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving. Grief allows me to see beyond my wall and realize the immense suffering that results from human lostness.

Great gift-giving involves three things: you feel what the other feels; you give freely; and you count sacrifice a bargain… those gifts are truly great which are given simply for the joy they bring to another heart.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.

Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.

As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

On Christmas morning, before we could open our Christmas presents, we would go to this stranger's home and bring them presents. I remember helping clean the house up and putting up a tree. My father believed that you have a responsibility to look after everyone else.