If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.

The American people have not become heartless.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

When we believe the best of people, we let go of each thing they do that is hurtful to us. And we choose to think things like, ‚I don’t believe they meant to hurt me.‘ ‚Maybe they’re having a bad day or don’t feel well.‘ ‚They probably don’t even realize how they sound.‘

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

When the people become involved in their government, government becomes more accountable, and our society is stronger, more compassionate, and better prepared for the challenges of the future.

All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Philanthropy should be voluntary.

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

It’s that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so ‚don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.‘

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: ‚What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.‘

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

It’s amazing how people will give when you don’t ask. Many of them send money because they believe in the message.

When I ask people to give, I can’t be on television if they don’t; I can’t help people, if I don’t – I mean, it takes money.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

Money doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve made a lot of money, but I want to enjoy life and not stress myself building my bank account. I give lots away and live simply, mostly out of a suitcase in hotels. We all know that good health is much more important.

T stands for being nice. T stands for manners. T stands for being polite.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

The exercise of benevolence is joy to loving hearts: the more pain it costs, the more joy it is. Kind actions make us happy, and in such joy we find communion with the great heart of Jesus.

I like gifts. I like to give them and I like to get them.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there’s no doubt that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.