Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

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

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

The kindness that’s been shown to me, by doctors as well as my family and my friends, it’s really saved my life.

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

Every loss of life is terrible.

My father always taught me that when you help other people, then God will give you double. And that’s what has really happened to me. When I have helped other people who are in need, God has helped me more.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

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.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

We do not judge the people we love.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

I just don’t like killing creatures.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

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

The more credit you give away, the more will come back to you. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race – racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic – what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

Ethiopia didn’t just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, ‚Would you take my son with you?‘ He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

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.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘