Quotes about kindness and gratitude
26 passages from classic authors that speak of kindness and gratitude, for example by G. K. Chesterton, George MacDonald and William Shakespeare.
We kept the passages whose text touches on the theme, starting with those where it comes up most. Each is given word for word, with its author, its work and the reference of the passage. To browse an author’s quotes, follow the name.
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“The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom.”
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“I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.”
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“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
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“In democracies no great benefits are conferred, but good offices are constantly rendered.”
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“Kindness is the principle of tact, and respect for others the first condition of savoir-vivre.”
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“That best portion of a good man’s life; / His little, nameless, unremembered acts / Of kindness and of love.”
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“There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mine.”
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“Can I see another’s woe, / And not be in sorrow too? / Can I see another’s grief, / And not seek for kind relief?”
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“Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder standing in the shade with constancy of patience.”
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“Let the tears of the poor man find with thee more compassion, but not more justice, than the pleadings of the rich.”
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“While I am very prone to take offence, I am equally quick to forget injuries, and have a memory tenacious of benefits.”
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“If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes.”
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“When our friends have deceived us we owe them but indifference to the tokens of their friendship, yet for their misfortunes we always owe them pity.”
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“The hand of liberality is stronger than the arm of power.--Hatim Tayi remains not, yet will his exalted name live renowned for generosity to all eternity.”
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“the wagon-load of firewood’s not being seen is because the eyesight was not used; and the people’s not being loved and protected is because the kindness is not used.”
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“He, who lives under the guidance of reason, endeavours, as far as possible, to render back love, or kindness, for other men’s hatred, anger, contempt, &c., towards him.”
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“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
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“’Tis humane to have compassion on the afflicted and as it shews well in all, so it is especially demanded of those who have had need of comfort and have found it in others”
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“I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not here to make the transitory permanent?”
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“Yet Feridún was not an angel, nor / Composed of musk or ambergris. By justice / And generosity he gained his fame. / Do thou but exercise these princely virtues, / And thou wilt be renowned as Feridún.”
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“I see in the Grasshopper’s fiddle, the Tree-frog’s bagpipes and the cymbals of the Cacan but so many methods of expressing the joy of living, the universal joy which every animal species celebrates after its kind.”
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“If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know, and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one’s love for other reptiles and animals.”
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“To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat but exclusion from mankind.”
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“To create, to destroy--these are the two raptures of infancy: to create is a long, slow process; to destroy is quick and easy. The least act of creation implies those best gifts of the Creator and of kindly Nature: gentleness and patience.”
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“Though many ages are gone since Nushirowan was in being, yet in the remembrance of his munificence is his fair renown left. Be generous, O my friend! and avail thyself of life, before they proclaim it as an event that such a person is not left.”
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“To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation.”