Benevolence Quotes - Page 6

• Surely nothing is more reproachful to a being endowed with reason, than to resign its powers to the influence of the air, and live in dependence on the weather and the wind, for the only blessings which nature has put into our power, tranquillity and benevolence. To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the sun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolatry of folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Blessing, Clouds, Air

  Samuel Johnson, Peter Martin (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.73, Harvard University Press

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• The big belly can accommodate all kinds of things. The benevolence is never let a dust behind.

  Gautama Buddha

  Dust, Kind, Bigs

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• The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.

  Herbert Spencer

  Strong, Poverty, Misery

  Herbert Spencer (2016). “The Man versus the State: Great Essays”, p.73, VM eBooks

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• Who are we really? Combinations of common chemicals that perform mechanical actions for a few years before crumbling back into the original components? Fresh new souls, drawn at random for some celestial cupboard where God keeps an unending supply?Or the same soul, immortal and eternal, refurbished and reused through endless lives, by that thrifty Housekeeper? In Her wisdom and benevolence She wipes off the memory slates, as part of the cleaning process, because if we could remember all the things we have experienced in earlier lives, we might object to risking it again.

  Barbara Mertz

  Memories, Years, Soul

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• Liberated from the error of pagan tradition through the benevolence and loving kindness of the good God with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the operation of the Holy Spirit, I was reared from the very beginning by Christian parents. From them I learned even in babyhood the Holy Scriptures which led me to a knowledge of the truth.

  Saint Basil

  Christian, Jesus, Kindness

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• Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.

  Walter Scott

  Selfishness, World, Causes

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• I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.

  Blaise Pascal

  Fall, Greatness, Space

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• Without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.

  Charles Dickens

  Happiness, Gratitude, Strong

  Charles Dickens (1839). “Oliver Twist; Or, the Parish Boy's Progress”, p.364

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• Were the superfluities of a nation valued, and made a perpetual tax or benevolence, there would be more alms-houses than poor, schools than scholars, and enough to spare for government besides.

  William Penn

  School, Government, House

  William Penn (1782). “The Select Works of William Penn: In Five Volumes. ...”, p.126

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• So far as I am acquainted with the principles and doctrines of Freemasonry, I conceive it to be founded in benevolence and to be exercised only for the good of mankind.

  George Washington

  Principles, Doctrine, Masonic

  George Washington, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1798). “The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799”

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• You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

  Aldous Huxley

  Dog, Atheist, Fear

  1932 Texts and Pretexts,'Amor Fati'.

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• It’s the Muslims who are dragging the rest of the world with them, in their genocidal dreams of annihilating goodness, creativity, production, inventiveness, benevolence, charity, medicine, technology, and all of the gifts of the Jews. Our goodness makes them ill.

  Pamela Geller

  Dream, Creativity, Technology

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• I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

  Paul Newman

  Children, Thinking, Luck

  Paul Newman, A.E. Hotchner (2003). “Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good: The Madcap Business Adventure by the Truly Oddest Couple”, p.102, Nan A. Talese

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• I longed that those who, I have reason to think, owe me ill will, might be eternally happy. It seemed refreshing to think of meeting them in heaven, how much soever they had injured me on earth: had no disposition to insist upon any confession from them, in order to reconciliation, and the exercise of love and kindness to them. Oh! it is an emblem of heaven itself, to love all the world with a love of kindness, forgiveness, and benevolence.

  David Brainerd

  Kindness, Exercise, Thinking

  David Brainerd, Ebenezer Pemberton (1765). “An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd: Minister of the Gospel, Missionary to the Indians, from the Honourable Society in Scotland, for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, and Pastor of a Church of Christian Indians in New Jersey. Who Died at Northampton in New-England, October 9, 1747, in the 30th Year of His Age. Chiefly Taken from His Own Diary, and Other Private Writings, Written for His Own Use; and Now Published”, p.103

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• In the present, the way benevolence is expressed is in conceptualizing the Native as a historical relic; US people have to be constantly reminded that there are still existent Indigenous peoples and communities in North America, but whether left or right, recent immigrant or descendants of settlers, even descendants of enslaved Africans, the Native presence is not a consideration in the day to day life of individuals and municipal, state and national governments.

  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  America, Government, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Beautiful, Law, Needs

  Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2016). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.42, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed.

  Gore Vidal

  Teacher, Simple, Sea

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• O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Lying, Church, Kind

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2016). “Collected Works (Complete and Illustrated Editions: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Queer Little Folks, The Chimney-Corner, ...)”, p.287, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

  Confucius

  Lying, Character, Mean

  Confucius (2013). “Confucian Analects, The Great Learning & The Doctrine of the Mean”, p.274, Courier Corporation

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• Benevolence does not consist in those who are prosperous pitying and helping those who are not. It consists in fellow feeling that puts you upon actually the same level with the fellow who suffers.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Feelings, Suffering, Doe

  Woodrow Wilson (1956). “A crossroads of freedom, the 1912 campaign speeches”

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• Starbucks trying to build a different kind of company around the balance of profitably and benevolence. A social conscience. And that isn't a program it has to be a way of life.

  Howard Schultz

  Balance, Trying, Different

  Interview with Ipek Cem, www.global-leaders.tv. December 14, 2005.

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• What is the elevation of the soul? A prompt, delicate, certain feeling for all that is beautiful, all that is grand; a quick resolution to do the greatest good by the smallest means; a great benevolence joined to a great strength and great humility.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Beautiful, Mean, Humility

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• Faith is a knowledge of the benevolence of God toward us, and a certain persuasion of His veracity.

  John Calvin

  Persuasion, Certain, Veracity

  John Calvin (2009). “Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol. 1: Translated from the Original Latin, and Collated With the Author's Last Edition in French”, p.501, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• These eyes see the incredible benevolence of the universe, which is completely trustworthy in all respects. There is nothing to fear. Everything in each moment is so well taken care of - and always has been.

  Suzanne Segal

  Taken, Eye, Care

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• The little mind who loves itself, will wr'te and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Thinking, Mind, Eccentric

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