Beneficence Quotes

Christian beneficence takes a large sweep; that circumference cannot be small of which God is the centre.

Hannah More.

Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man’s life.

Sir P.Sidney.

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

A.Mann.

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.

Dumas.

The luxury of doing good surpasses every other personal enjoyment.

Gay.

He that does good to another, does good also to himself, not only in the consequences, but in the very act; for the consciousness of  well doing is, in itself, ample reward.

Seneca.

God has so constituted our nature that we cannot be happy unless we are, or think we are, the means of good to others. We can scarcely conceive of greater wretchedness than must be felt by him who knows he is wholly useless in the world.

Erskine Mason.

Men resemble the gods in nothing so much as in doing good to their fellow creatures.

Cicero.

Rich people should consider that they are only trustees for what they possess, and should show their wealth to be more in doing good than merely in having it. They should not reserve their benevolence for purposes after they are dead, for those who give not of their property till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.

Bp Hall.

It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful; but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so. I had rather never receive a kindness than never bestow one. Not to return a benefit is a great sin; but not to confer one is a greater.

Seneca.

For his bounty there was no winter to it; an autumn it was that grew more by reaping.

Shakespeare.

There is no use of money equal to that of beneficence; here the enjoyment grows on reflection; and our money is most truly ours when it ceases to be in our possession.

Mackenzie.

Time is short; your obligations are infinite. Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the work of piety accomplished?

Massillon.

I never knew a child of God being bankrupted by his benevolence. What we keep we may lose, but what we give to Christ we are sure to keep.

T.L. Cuyler.

Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.

Sir T Browne.

Of all the virtues necessary to the completion of the perfect man, there is none to be more delicately implied and less ostentatiously vaunted than that of exquisite feeling or universal benevolence.

Bulwer.

Money spent on ourselves may be a millstone about the neck; spent on others it may give us wings like eagles.

R.D. Hitchcock.

You are so to give, and to sacrifice to give, as to earn the eulogium pronounced on the woman, “ She hath done what she could.” Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of a cold world.

Guthrie.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out be accident.

Lamb.

Beneficence is a duty; and he who frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions realized comes, at length, really to love him to whom he has done good.

Kant.

Time, which gnaws and diminishes all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality doth grow continually by our generously thing king of it and remembering it.

Rabelais.