Being Generous Quotes

In the Catholic tradition, the idea of giving something up on a Friday - the act of self denial - has always been tied with being generous to those in need. ~ Vincent Nichols

Jacque leaned over and whispered in Sally's ear, "I give it two days before he lays one on her."
"You're being generous. I say less than twenty four hours."
"Is that a bet?" Jacque asked, eyebrows raised.
"Better believe it," Sally answered. Her lips eased into a crooked smile.
Jen leaned around Sally and glared at her two best friends. "What are you two betting on?"
"Good grief. What, does she have eagle ears or something?"
"No, you dork. Your whisper is just you talking in normal volume but making your voice raspy. Really, you sound more like a chick who's been smoking for thirty years."
Jen shrugged. "I'm just throwing that out there. You can take it and apply it at your leisure."
Fane was chuckling at Jen's words when Jacque elbowed him, causing him to cough."You don't get to laugh, wolf-man."
Jacque turned back to Jen. "Thank you for that observation, Sherlock."
"Always glad to help a friend in need, Watson." Jen grinned at Jacque's irritated look. ~ Quinn Loftis

There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

We have to touch such men, not with a bargepole, but with a benediction," he said. "We have to say the word that will save them from hell. We alone are left to deliver them from despair when your human charity deserts them. Go on your own primrose path pardoning all your favourite vices and being generous to your fashionable crimes; and leave us in the darkness, vampires of the night, to console those who really need consolation; who do things really indefensible, things that neither the world nor they themselves can defend; and none but a priest will pardon. Leave us with the men who commit the mean and revolting and real crimes; mean as St. Peter when the cock crew, and yet the dawn came. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Willa Jean, pleased to have her grandmother on her side, set a red checker on top of a black checker. "Your turn," she said to Ramona as if she were being generous. ~ Beverly Cleary

I'm convinced being generous is a better way to live. I'm convinced forgiving people and not carrying around bitterness is a better way to live. I'm convinced having compassion is a better way to live. I'm convinced pursuing peace in every situation is a better way to live. I'm convinced listening to the wisdom of others is a better way to live. I'm convinced being honest with people is a better way to live. ~ Rob Bell

The only way to save our dreams is by being generous with ourselves. ~ Paulo Coelho

I remember when being liberal meant being generous with your own money. ~ Will Rogers

Anyway, Ms. Rothschild wasn't my first crush."
"She wasn't?"
"No. You were."
It takes me a few seconds to process this. Even then, all I can manage is, "Huh?"
"When I first moved here, before I knew your true personality." I kick him in the shin for that, and he yelps. "I was twelve, and you were eleven. I let you ride my scooter, remember? That scooter was my pride and joy. I saved up for it for two birthdays. And I let you take it for a ride."
"I thought you were just being generous."
"You crashed it and you got a big scratch on the side," he continues. "Remember that?"
"Yeah, I remember you cried."
"I didn't cry. I was justifiably upset. And that was the end of my little crush. ~ Jenny Han

I've always had a knowing that being kind is a lot more effective than being angry. And being generous has always been a characteristic I've had; whatever I've had, I've always been willing to give away. Those are best spiritual qualities. ~ Wayne Dyer

A mind that's open to everything means being peaceful, radiating love, practicing forgiveness, being generous, respecting all life, and most important, visualizing yourself as capable of doing anything that you can conceive of in your mind and heart. ~ Wayne Dyer

I wonder why anyone would hesitate to be generous with their writing. I mean, if you really want to make a living, go to Wall Street and trade oil futures ... We're writers. We're doing something that is inherently a generous act. We're exposing ourselves to the muse and to the things that frighten us. Why do that if you're not willing to be generous? And paradoxically, almost ironically, it turns out that the more generous you are, the more money you make. But that's secondary. For me, the privilege of being generous is why I get to do this. ~ Seth Godin

When you feel overwhelmed, you're trying too hard. That kind of energy does not help the other person and it does not help you. You should not be too eager to help right away. There are two things: to be and to do. Don't think too much about to do - to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. To be happiness. And then to do joy, to do happiness - on the basis of being. So first you have to focus on the practice of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being attentive. Being generous. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It's like if the other person is sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Granny was truly marvellous; five feet of Yorkshire common sense, love, and superstition. She was always saying wise things. I remember, among many sayings, when one time she had given me a particularly good present, she said, "No it's not generous. Being generous is giving something that's hard to give." She was so superstitious that she kept a set of worthless china to break when she happened to break something good, on the grounds that breakages always came in threes and it was as well to get it over. I would have been lost without Granny, that I know. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Doing more and more with less and less is one form of being generous. In fact, the easiest way to become rich is by being generous. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

No touching Baby Jesus."
"But we're his parents!" proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation.
"Mary Beth," Barb Wiggin said, "if you touch the Baby Jesus, I'm putting you in a cow costume. ~ John Irving

Being generous and kindly in speech, doing a good turn for others, and treating all alike. One like this will be praised. ~ Gautama Buddha

Be fair before being generous, be human before being fair. ~ Fernan Caballero

Describing the USA health care system as mediocre is being generous. ~ Steven Magee

Being generous or doing things for others actually makes me feel good so I don't do it because I hope karma will come round and get me and I'll benefit from it. ~ David Schwimmer

The thing I got to thinking about,' he said, 'is
what are the conditions that lead to larger portions of society being generous, humble, and selfless? While we have the conditions for economic opportunity here
and that is a blessing
do we have the conditions to learn how to self-regulate our own passions for the good of the whole? ~ Warren St. John

The poor can't wait. Philanthropists needed to carry on being generous. ~ Bill Gates

Start ringing things up then. This won't take long."
"Which ones?"
"I don't care." I push some at her. "These."
"These?" She looked dubious.
"Why not these?"
She glanced at Ray. "'Cause if that's your man, I'd say you can leave these off."
"Oh, no, you didn't." Ray said.
"What's this shit?" Ray demanded, looking at the saleclerk.
"Honey, truth hurts, but ain't no way you're a Magnum."
"Well, I ain't no medium!"
The clerk smiled. "Yeah, but I was being generous."
"What are you doing?" The clerk demanded as Ray grabbed another box. "I ain't rung those up yet."
Ray pulled out a foil package and tossed the box back on the counter. "So ring it up."
She arched an eyebrow, but didn't bother, maybe because she was watching him unbutton his fly. I caught his wrist. "What are you doing?"
"Proving a point."
"Not in the middle of the store, you're not."
"Ain't nobody here," the cashier reminded me. "And ain't no way he's filling that thing out. ~ Karen Chance

Being generous without keeping score strengthens your spirit, keeps you focused on the people who make your business what it is, and helps breed success. ~ Brandon Steiner

Extend some kind of unexpected generosity to someone, preferably a stranger, every single day for two weeks. The more you practice being generous, the more you'll impact others in an inspiring way. ~ Wayne Dyer

As for everyone else, there have been cases when I have felt taken advantage of…when people have taken from me without giving back. I have felt wronged and have judged those people as unfair. And it has bothered me. I have asked myself: What should I do? Should I refrain from being generous? Should I change? And every time I have considered this, I have realised that there are certain situations, generally seen as difficult, sad, or unfair, that allow us to express our higher self. I aspire to be more than my biology. I can choose. I am endowed with reason. My death is certain and my time limited, but I can choose how to live. What would make me into someone I can be proud of, someone who counts among the heroes of my own life? Would it be a person who practises calculated goodness or one who strives to be good for its own sake? And if goodness is to be my demise, given that a demise is unavoidable, is it still not better to die loving than to succumb in any other way? …I don't know…. I'm not sure I've made much sense…. I am still searching for the answers. All I have right now are glimpses and intuitions. ~ Sheila Matharu

When you win and the other fellow loses, what do you see? A losing face. There is great joy in losing and making the other person win and have a happy face. Who will be the happiest person? The one who brings happiness to others. ~ Swami Satchidananda

Being generous, just helping one's relatives and being blameless in one's actions; this is the best good luck. ~ Gautama Buddha

Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live. ~ Pete Seeger

For the Buddha of the Pali Canon, the goal is liberation: the cessation of suffering, the end of the endless hamster-wheel of dependent origination, of mental formations leading to desire leading to clinging leading to suffering and so on. Nibbana, or nirvana, was not originally conceived as some magical heavenly world, or even a permanent altered state of consciousness. It is usually described, in the early texts, negatively: as a candle being snuffed out. ~ Jay Michaelson

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is. ~ Taylor Hackford

While a handful of countries and a small number of people are leading ample life, dozens of countries and billions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being left in absolute poverty. ~ Tran Duc Luong

Also not being afraid to stand up for what you believe in while taking into account that you could very well be wrong, or maybe there's another way to look at it- that things are not what they seem to be, and that everything is subjective. ~ Surya Das

For the time being I have seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all flabby masses which move spontaneously. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

...back home, all Persians- even Fractional Persians like me and Laleh- were united in our Persian-ness... But here, surrounded by Persians, Sohrab was singled out for being Bahá'I. ~ Adib Khorram

There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process. ~ John Powell

Just because someone thinks he is being attacked by the media doesn't mean he is. Many times the media actually is being fair, and they're attacking for good reason. ~ Roger Ailes

The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. ~ Carlos Castaneda

He was discovering that being in love was not a steady state, but a matter of fresh surges or waves, and he was experiencing one now. ~ Ian McEwan

All too often we think of community in terms of being with folks like ourselves: the same class, same race, same ethnicity, same social standing and the like..I think we need to be wary: we need to work against the danger of evoking something that we don't challenge ourselves to actually practice. ~ Bell Hooks

I rarely acquire any enthusiasm for the opposite sex outside of being drunk. ~ Claire-Louise Bennett

I'm very comfortable with the idea of there being late bloomers, and for me, of course, there's no difficulty at all in the way that I think of talent and achievement and so on. ~ Daniel Tammet

The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted. ~ Leo Rosten

Many, if not most, of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can, in fact, be directly connected to the earlier miracle of the Creation. The same Being who, as Jehovah, organized the elements and framed the heavens and the earth was thus, as the Man of Galilee, able to control the winds and the waves. He could change water to wine, multiply loaves and fishes, heal bodies, and restore sight by the same power...that he had exercised in the beginning. ~ Eric D. Huntsman

The token females of most superhero teams often had to suppress their femininity in order to be taken seriously by their male compatriots. When heroines like Invisible Girl or Wasp do display an interest in traditionally female pursuits like love, fashion or the latest hairstyle, their male teammates chide them for being frivolous females. ~ Mike Madrid

Being an author, writing a book was great fun. Publishing and marketing, not so fun. ~ Wynne Stevens

It's not so much the amount of tax we pay - it's the sense that our pocket's being picked without our knowing what's going on. ~ Andrew Bacevich

But the most important thing to know about being an introvert is that there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken because you're quiet. It's okay to stay home on a Friday night instead of going to a party. Being an introvert is a perfectly normal 'thing' to be. ~ Jenn Granneman

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perce ~ Alexander Lowen

And thus being totally preoccupied, he rode so slowly that the sun was soon glowing with such intense heat that it would have melted his brains, if he'd had any. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Little white lies are part of everyday life. If you're in court being charged with a felony, you're probably going to be tempted to lie. Or if your girlfriend asks you if the sweater she is wearing makes her look fat; you're going to lie because you love that person. There are different reasons and justifications to lie; it's human nature. ~ Monica Raymund

To a woman, being married means you do not under any circumstances put your penis in another woman's vagina. It also means no blowjobs, no oral, no anal, no phone sex, no sex of any kind, ever, with anyone other than your wife for as long as you're married. As soon as you say 'I do', it means that where other women are concern 'I don't' is the only correct response. If you play by these rules, you're safe. If you don't, we leave. It's really that simple. ~ Helen Argiro

I end up watching this movie about some girl who's supposed to be so smart and edgy and unpopular. She wears glasses, that's how you know she's so smart. And she's the only one that has dark hair in the school- a place that looks like Planet Blond.

Anyway, she somehow ends up going to the prom- hello, gag- and she doesn't wear her glasses, so suddenly she's all beautiful. And she's bashful and shy because she doesn't feel comfortable wearing a dress. But then the guy says something like, "Wow, I never knew you were so pretty," and she feels on top of the world.

So, basically, the whole point is she's pretty. Oh, and smart, too. But what's really important here is that she's pretty.

For a second I think about Katie. About her thin little Clarissa Le Fey.

It must be a pain being fat. There are NO fat people on Planet Blond.

I don't get it. I mean, even movies where the actress is smart- like they seem like they'd be smart in real life, they're all gorgeous. And they usually get a boyfriend somewhere in the story. Even if they say they don't want one. They always, always end up falling in love, and you're supposed to be like, "Oh, good."

I once said this to my mom, and she laughed. "Honey, Hollywood... reality- two different universes. Don't make yourself crazy."

Which made me feel pretty pathetic. Like I didn't know the difference between a movie and the real world.

But then when eve ~ Mariah Fredericks

To love God more is never to love people less. It's to love people best. It's to relieve them of the responsibility of being your false Christ. It's to keep their sins against you from being unforgivable and your sins against them from being ignorable. It's to guard them from our mean-streaks and strong human tendencies to respond to disappointment with punishment. It's to keep the people close by from cutting their wrists on the razor-sharp blades of our insecurities. It's to dull the edge of our cravings to be adored. It's to untie the double knots of codependency. It's to let the affirmations of others be the overflow and not the essential source of our emotional survival. To love God is to guard man. ~ Beth Moore

Some of you may have been hoping that today I would speak about Lucien Bouchard's latest economic theories. But I have decided to spare him for the time being: after all, he is a man. ~ Kim Campbell

There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest-of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being. ~ Henry Hazlitt

[F]or who ever heard of a Gold-finder that had the Impudence or Folly to assert, from the ill Success of his Search, that there was no such thing as Gold in the World? Whereas the Truth-finder, having raked out that Jakes his own mind, and being there capable of tracing no Ray of Divinity, nor any thing virtuous, or good, or lovely, very fairly, honestly, and logically concludes, that no such things exist in the whole creation. ~ Henry Fielding

He turned down the street to Emilio's, trying to remember what "the edge of chaos" meant. It was something about flipping a coin, something about the edge being the moment when the coin was in the air. The point at which the system was pure potential, about to choose a path. Or something about a pile of sand, adding sand a grain at a time, and the edge of chaos being the point at which the critical grain landed and the pile either shifted or turned into an avalanche...
...Min bit her lip and smiled at him ruefully, and without another thought, he walked across the room to her, feeling almost relieved as the avalanche began. ~ Jennifer Crusie

Do not place the words of ANYONE above the feelings of your own being. You can learn much from others, but the deepest knowledge must come from within yourself. ~ Seth

It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. ~ Mary Shelley