Generous Quotes - Page 12

• [My father] was generous with his affection, given to great, awkward, engulfing hugs, and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs, all starched shirt, tobacco, Old Spice, and Cutty Sark. Sometimes I think I've never been properly hugged since.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Friendship, Father, Thinking

  Linda Ellerbee (1993). “Move On”

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• A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
  Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;
  One should our interests and our passions be,
  My friend must hate the man that injures me.

  Homer

  Friendship, Hate, Passion

  Homer (1813). “The Iliad”, p.220

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• As the most generous vine, if it is not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems, and grows at last weak and fruitless; so dote the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions. If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither. Let me be pruned, that I may grow, rather than be cut up to burn.

  Joseph Hall

  Running, Cutting, Men

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• Ah, we have to be generous to be grateful ... One has oneself to be a giver.

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Gratitude, Grateful, Giver

  Ivy Compton-Burnett (2011). “A Heritage and its History”, p.66, A&C Black

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• Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

  Twyla Tharp

  Opposites, Generosity, Community

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• Dependence goes somewhat against the grain of a generous mind; and it is no wonder that it should do so, considering the unreasonable advantage which is often taken of the inequality of fortune.

  Jeremy Collier

  Taken, Mind, Wonder

  Jeremy COLLIER (the Nonjuror.), J. E. (1838). “Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of “Sir William Jones's Discourses,” etc. [The editor's preface signed: J. E., i.e. James Elmes.]”, p.28

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• Emulation is a handsome passion; it is enterprising, but just withal. It keeps a man within the terms of honor, and makes the contest for glory just and generous. He strives to excel, but it is by raising himself, not by depressing others.

  Jeremy Collier

  Depressing, Passion, Men

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• Goodness is generous and diffusive; it is largeness of mind, and sweetness of temper,--balsam in the blood, and justice sublimated to a richer spirit.

  Jeremy Collier

  Blood, Justice, Mind

  Jeremy COLLIER (the Nonjuror.), J. E. (1838). “Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of “Sir William Jones's Discourses,” etc. [The editor's preface signed: J. E., i.e. James Elmes.]”, p.48

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• A saint is simply a human being whose soul has ... grown up to its full stature, by full and generous response to its environment, God. He has achieved a deeper, bigger life than the rest of us, a more wonderful contact with the mysteries of the Universe; a life of infinite possibility, the term of which he never feels that he has reached.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Soul, Saint, Mystery

  Evelyn Underhill (2006). “Lent With Evelyn Underhill”, p.34, A&C Black

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• A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.

  Lord Acton

  Country, Powerful, Generous Spirit

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.45, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

  Lord Acton

  Justice, Mercy, Temper

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• Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

  Denis Diderot

  Vanity, Doe, Action

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• In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiner's Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island Duck, he might have written a masterpiece.

  A. J. Liebling

  Food, Loss, Light

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• The kind of crabbing my wife likes to do is to return from an afternoon's swim or sunbathing session, open the refrigerator door, and find a generous plate of crab cakes all ready to cook.

  Euell Gibbons

  Food, Doors, Cake

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• For years, I'd say yes to almost everything, trying to be nice and generous. Feeling obliged to be of service to the world. Maybe also a fear of being forgotten if I don't. But I paid the ultimate price in doing that, because for all those years, I got almost no work done! Some famous authors have written about this: that if they said yes to every request, then they'd never have time to write another book again.

  Derek Sivers

  Nice, Book, Writing

  "Brave Interview: Derek Sivers". Interview with Margie Warrell, www.business2community.com. July 5, 2015.

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• No matter how rich or poor you might feel, right now is the time to be generous.

  Andy Stanley

  Rich Or Poor, Might, Matter

  Source: paulsohn.org

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• While generosity may be the antidote for the dizzying effects of wealth, your appetite for more may function as an antidote against God-honoring generosity. Your appetite for more stuff, status, and security has the potential to quash your efforts to be generous. And that's a problem.

  Andy Stanley

  Generosity, Effort, May

  Source: paulsohn.org

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• How frequently is the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or shrug! How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped With the imputation of proceeding from bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!

  Laurence Sterne

  Honesty, Integrity, Men

  Laurence Sterne (1857). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Sermons, Letters, Etc”, p.548

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• I would go fifty miles on foot to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his Author's hands; be pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.

  Laurence Sterne

  Sympathy, Giving Up, Heart

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself”, p.82

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• Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not become more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Believe, Book, Reading

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• It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  God, Wise, Humble

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• Happy the man whom indulgent fortune allows to pay to virtue what he owes to nature, and to make a generous gift of what must otherwise be ravished from him by cruel necessity.

  David Hume

  Men, Pay, Virtue

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.668, Delphi Classics

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• The slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling, as the sun and rain foster your favourite flowers. Cherish kind wishes, my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice.

  Mary Russell Mitford

  Kindness, Children, Rain

  Mary Russell Mitford (1870). “Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery”, p.439

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• Being moderate with oneself and generous with others; this is what is meant by having a just relationship with money, by being free as far as money is concerned.

  Natalia Ginzburg

  Money, Being Free, Concerned

  Natalia Ginzburg, Dick Davis (1989). “The Little Virtues”, p.102, Arcade Publishing

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• Elizabeth ... had the prerogative of the rich that she could be generous with large sums and niggardly over small ones.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Rich, Prerogative

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Susanna Pinney (1998). “I'll stand by you: selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland : with narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Random House (UK)

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