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;void(0)) KINDNESS . . . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AFFIRMATION APPLAUSE, APPRECIATION APPROVAL CARING CHARITY COMFORT COMPASSION COMPLIMENTS CONCERN CONSIDERATE (ON) DOING GOOD ENCOURAGEMENT FAVORS FORGIVENESS GENEROSITY, GENTLENESS GIFTS & GIVING GOOD DEEDS GOODNESS & GOODWILL GREETINGS HELPING HUMANITARIANISM LIGHT LOVE MAKING A DIFFERENCE MERCY PHILANTHROPY PRAISE RECOGNITION SACRIFICE SYMPATHY THOUGHTFULNESS VOLUNTEERING Kindness effects more than severity. --Ζsop (c.620 B.C.c.560 B.C.) (Thought to be a legendary figure.) _Ζsop's Fables_ "The Wind and the Sun" - Abraham Lincoln and his law partner, William Herndon, were arguing the question of whether or not any person ever performs a completely unselfish act. They were riding together through the country and came upon a pig caught in a rail fence. Herndon pretended not to see the animal and passed on by. But Lincoln stopped, got down and waded through a muddy ditch, pulled the rails apart and released the pig. Herndon pointed triumphantly to Lincoln's muddy shoes and spattered trousers, saying, "You see now I am right. Men are capable of performing unselfish deeds." "Oh no," replied Lincoln, "if I had left that pig in the fence, I would have worried about him all night. I would have been so busy wondering if someone had rescued him, or if he was still held between those rails, that I would have lost my sleep. For my own peace of mind, I had to rescue the animal. So, you see, I was merely being selfish." --Charles Livingston Allen (19132005) American minister. _The Greatest of These is Love_ [1986], "Love Overcomes Destructive Emotions" - My advice to salesmen is this: pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, 'Make me feel important.' Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life. --attributed to Mary Kay Ash (19182001) American businesswoman and founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. --Bible "Hebrews" 13:2 NIV The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable. --Joseph Stevens Buckminster (17841812) American Unitarian preacher. Attributed in Noah Webster _A Dictionary of the English Language_ [2 vols., 1832]. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. --Leo [Felice Leonardo] Buscaglia (19251998) American professor and author of inspirational books. _Born For Love: Reflections on Loving_ [1992] Truth generally is kindness, but where the two diverge and collide, kindness should override truth. --Samuel Butler (18351902) English novelist, essayist, and critic. _The Note-Books of Samuel Butler_, ed. Henry Festing Jones [1917 ed.] You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone. --Al (Alphonse Gabriel) Capone (18991947) American gangster. The quotation is apocryphal according to William Safire in _No Uncertain Terms_, p. 16 [2004]. Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love, Make our pleasant earth below Like the heaven above. --Mrs. Julia Fletcher Carney (18231908) American educator and poet. "Little Things" [1845] How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. --George Washington Carver (18641943) American agricultural chemist and agronomist. Attributed in "Black Enterprise", p. 256 [June 1983]. When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them. --Willa Sibert Cather (18731947) American novelist. _My Mortal Enemy_, pt. I, ch. 6 [1926] Kindness is produced by kindness. --Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 BC) Roman orator and statesman. _De officiis_ (On Duties), bk. II, 15 [44 B.C.] The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling. --Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. _The Friend_ [1828] Act with kindness, but do not expect gratitude. --attributed to Confucius (551479 B.C.) K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher. Oh, the comfort the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. --Dinah Mulock Craik (18261887) English writer and poet. _A Life for a Life_, ch. 16 [1859] The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom. --Clarence Darrow (18571938) American lawyer. _The Story of My Life_ [1932] It's pleasant to hear these nice words while I'm still alive. I'd rather have the taffy than the epitaphy. --Chauncey Depew (18341928) American orator, politician, and railroad president. Quoted in Herbert Victor Prochnow _The Public Speaker's Treasure Chest_ [1977 ed.]. No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _Our Mutual Friend_ [18641865], ch. IX "Somebody Becomes the Subject of a Prediction" If I can stop one Heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain. Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in vain. --Emily Dickinson (18301886) American poet. "If I can stop one heart from breaking", written in 1864; in "Poems, First Series" [1890]. The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own. --attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. --attributed to Amelia Earhart (18971937) American aviator who disappeared in a flight over the Pacific Ocean. When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Adam Bede_, ch. IV [1859] - You can never do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _The Conduct of Life_ [1860] (Wikiquote) There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _The Conduct of Life_ [1860] - A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is, even for its own sake, incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of the mind the most amiable, and, though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest. --Henry Fielding (17071754) English novelist and dramatist. _An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers_, sec. VIII [1751] Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution. --Kahlil Gibran (18831931) Lebanese poet. Quoted in Anthony Rizcallah Ferris _Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran_ [1963]. Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone: Kindness in anothers trouble, Courage in our own. --Adam Lindsay Gordon (18331870) Australian poet, jockey and politician. "Ye Wearie Wayfarer" Fyttes VIII Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last. --Rιmy de Gourmont (18581915) French novelist, poet, playwright, and philosopher. Attributed in Connie Robertson _The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 154 [1998]. ^ Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041964) American novelist. In March 1864, an ill Hawthorne was traveling with his old friend and publisher James Ticknor. Driving through Philadelphia, the bad weather turned even colder and rainier. Ticknor took off his coat and put it around Hawthorne's shoulders to protect him. It helped Hawthorne -- but Ticknor caught a severe case of pneumonia and died a few days later. --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ When I was young, I admired clever people; now that I am old, I admire kind people. --Abraham Joshua Heschel (19071972) Jewish theologian and philosopher. Quoted by his student, Harold S. Kushner, in _When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough_ [1986]. If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge. --attributed to Napoleon Hill (18831970) American journalist, lawyer, and author of self-help books. Don't be mean to the fool; put a penny in his cup, as you do for the blind beggar. --Edgar Watson Howe (18541937) American journalist and author. _Sinner Sermons_ [1926] - During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: 'What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?' Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. 'Absolutely,' said the professor. 'In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello'. I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy. --JoAnn C. Jones Attributed in Stephen R. Covey _The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness_ [2004]. - There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is surely yours is the present, hence this is the time to speak the word of appreciation and sympathy, to do the generous deed, to forgive the fault of a thoughtless friend, to sacrifice self a little more for others. Today is the day in which to express your noblest qualities of mind and heart, to do at least one worthy thing which you have long postponed, and to use your God-given abilities for the enrichment of some less fortunate fellow traveler. Today you can make your life big, broad, significant and worthwhile. The present is yours to do with it as you will. --Grenville Kleiser (18681953) American writer of humor and inspiration. _Inspiration And Ideals: Thoughts For Every Day_ [3rd. ed., 1918] - Bennett Cerf tells of Fiorello La Guardia presiding over the police court: One bitter cold day they brought a trembling old man before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. His family, he said, was starving. 'I've got to punish you,' declared La Guardia. 'The law makes no exception. I can do nothing but sentence you to a fine of ten dollars.' But the Little Flower was reaching into his pocket as he added, 'Well, here's the ten dollars to pay our fine. And now I remit the fine.' He tossed a ten-dollar bill into his famous sombrero. 'Futhermore,' he declared, 'I'm going to fine everybody in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a man has to steal bread in order to eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to this defendant!' The hat was passed and an incredulous old man, with a light of heaven in his eyes, left the courtroom with a stake of forty- seven dollars and fifty cents. --Bennett Cerf (18981971) American author, humorist, and publisher. In _Try and Stop Me_ [1944]. (Fiorello La Guardia (18821947) American politician who served three terms as mayor of New York City [1933-45]). - The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. --Charles Lamb (17751834) English essayist. Quoted in "The Athenaeum" (London) [4 January 1834]. Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. --Lao-tzu (c. 6th cent. B.C.) the first philosopher of Chinese Taoism and alleged author of the _Tao-te Ching_ (Chinese: Classic of the Way of Power). - If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch indeed who will not give them to him. --Louis XIV (16381715) King of France (16431715) Quoted in William Seward _Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_ [vol. IV, 5th ed., 1804] Deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him do to thee hereafter. --_The Mahabharata_, c. 800 B. C. Sanskrit epic poem. One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind. --Malay Proverb Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. --Og Mandino (19231996) American author and motivational speaker. Quoted in H. Jackson Brown _P.S. I Love You_ [1999]. We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne. --attributed to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121180) Roman emperor [161180] and Stoic philosopher. You can no longer believe that what you do does not matter. It is as if you are dancing along a beach, making footprints on the edge where the shoreline meets the sea. No one is applauding. No one sees your splendid gyrations of joy. You know full well that the tide will come and wash the marks your dance has left. Still, the dance lives on in your heart, as does the simple, clean delight of being alive. --Dawna Markova Educator and author. Introduction to _Random Acts of Kindness_ [1993]. It is not the most lovable individuals who stand more in need of lovebut the most unlovable. --attributed to Ashley Montagu [Israel Ehrenberg] (19051999) English anthropologist and humanist. Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used. --Blaise Pascal (16231662) French mathematician, physicist, and moralist. Attributed in American Unitarian Association _Day Unto Day_ [5th ed. 1873]. I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. --attributed to William Penn (16441718), Stephen Grellet (17731855), and others. - Not always actions show the man: we find Who does a kindness is not therefore kind. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _Moral Essays_ [17311735], "Epistle I, To Lord Cobham" [1734] Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _Imitations of Horace_ [1738] - The last, best fruit that comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard; forbearance, toward the unforbearing; warmth of heart, toward the cold; and philanthropy, toward the misanthropic. --Jean Paul Richter (17631825) German novelist. Attributed in Charles Simmons _A Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker_, p. 149 [1852]. To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer. --Sa'di [Muslih-uddin] (c. 11841291?) Iranian poet. Attributed in _Catch Words of Cheer_, compiled by Sara A. Hubbard [2nd ed., 1903]. I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is. --H. Norman Schwarzkopf, III (b. 1934) American general who commanded the U.S. forces in the Gulf War of 1991. _Journal-World_ [27 March 1991] Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. --Albert Schweitzer (18751965) Franco-German theologian, philosopher, and mission doctor. _The Teaching of Reverence for Life_ [1966] I had rather never receive a kindness, than never bestow one. Not to return a benefit is the greater sin, but not to confer it, is the earlier. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. 65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. "Of Benefits" The cheapest of all things is kindness, its exercise requiring the least possible trouble and self-sacrifice. 'Win hearts,' said Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth, 'and you have all men's hearts and purses.' --Samuel Smiles (18121904) Scottish author. _Self-Help_ [1859] Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it. --Sydney Smith (17711845) English clergyman and essayist. "On The Benevolent Affections" Lecture XXII of a series delivered at the Royal Institution (London) between 18041806. One evening at dinner, realizing that he had done nobody any favor since the previous night, Titus spoke these memorable words: 'My friends, I have wasted a day.' --Suetonius [Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus] (c. 69c. 122) Roman biographer and antiquarian. _"Titus"_ [c. 120] We cannot be kind to each other here for an hour; We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame; However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. --Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892) English poet. _Maud; A Monodra_ [1856] Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. --Mother Teresa (19101997) Roman Catholic nun and missionary. Quoted in Steve Sjogren _Conspiracy of Kindness_ [1993]. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing, but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber. --William Makepeace Thackeray (18111863) English novelist. _Vanity Fair_, ch. XIX "Miss Crawley At Nurse" [1847-48] - All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me. They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of my kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they told me what to do to win back my self-respect. Many times I wished that the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and beneficiaries. This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last I determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes myself. So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research accomplished my task. I will lay the result before you, giving you each anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it through my investigations. THE GRATEFUL POODLE One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the little outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter. But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some days later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in its company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had been broken. The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal, nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God, who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast poodle for the inculcating of, etc., etc., etc. SEQUEL The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other dogs-cripples. The cripples were speedily healed, and the four went their way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder than ever. The day passed, the morning came. There at the door sat now the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiring reconstruction. This day also passed, and another morning came; and now sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and the people were going around. By noon the broken legs were all set, but the pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to get mixed with involuntary profanity. The sun rose once more, and exhibited thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the room. The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but traffic was interrupted in that street. The good physician hired a couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required. But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned, and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as well acknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell the pretty part of the story, and then stop. Fetch me the shotgun; this thing has gone along far enough." He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg. Now the great and good work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and drive him mad. A month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and said: "Beware of the books. They tell but half of the story. Whenever a poor wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill the applicant." And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. "About Magnanimous-Incident Literature" in _The Atlantic Monthly_ [May 1878]. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ [1894], "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" ch. 16 - So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths while just the act of being kind is all the world needs. --Ella Wheeler Wilcox (18501919) American author and poet. "The World's Need" in Kate Louise Roberts _Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations_, p. 665 [1922]. - I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. --Tennessee Williams [Thomas Lanier Williams] (19111983) American dramatist. Blanche DuBois' final words, in "A Streetcar Named Desire" [1947]. & note: You cannot imagine the kindness I've received at the hands of perfect strangers. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Narrow Corner_, ch. 15 [1932] - That best portion of a good man's life. His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. --William Wordsworth (17701850) English poet. "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", l. 34 [1798] - Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or kind deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still. --unknown In _Bible Review_, p. 551 (ed. H.E. Butler) [1923]. - Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life. --anon. ----- benignant (adj.) 1. Kind; gracious. 2. Beneficial; favorable. end page | KARMA - KENTUCKY | KINDNESS | KILL - KU KLUX KLAN | KNOWLEDGE | LABELS - LAS VEGAS | LANGUAGE | LATIN - LAUGHTER | LAW (THE) - LAWYERS | LAZINESS - LEGACY | LEARNING | LEISURE - LIBERALS | LIBERTY - LIBRARY | LIES / LIARS / LYING | LIFE - PAGE 1 (A-L) | LIFE - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | LIFESTYLE - LIMITATIONS | LINCOLN (ABRAHAM) - LITTERING | LIVE - LONDON | LONELINESS - LOUISIANA | LOVE - PAGE 1 (A-L) | LOVE - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | LOVE & MARRIAGE - LYNCHING | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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