Selected charity quotes

1. When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

2. If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbour, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work.

3. Animals, they are one of the most beautiful gifts we have and, you know, if there are people that have compassion, there are very few people that put their money into animal rescue organizations. And if there is someone that has that passion, animals need all the help they can get.

4. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

5. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

6. In charity there is no excess.

7. True charity occurs only when there are no notions of giving, giver, or gift.

8. He tried the luxury of doing good.

9. Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

10. Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

11. Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.

12. To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

13. Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

14. In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.

15. I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

16. Be charitable and indulgent to everyone but thyself.

17. The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

18. I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

19. What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

20. A good deed hidden in silence dies.

21. A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.

22. If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

23. When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire.

24. What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

25. It is not enough merely to exist. It's not enough to say, 'I'm earning enough to support my family. I do my work well. I'm a good father, husband, churchgoer.' That's all very well. But you must do something more. Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here, too.

26. Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.

27. I sit at my table en grand seigneur, And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor; Not only the pleasure, one's self, of good living, But also the pleasure of now and then giving. So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! So pleasant it is to have money.

28. Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

29. 'He who builds a MASJID in the way of Allah, God will build a house for him in the paradise.'

30. Give your goods to the poor: Christ. Property is theft - as long as it's not mine: Marx.

31. Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature :-)

32. The size of the Federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

33. Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun!

34. The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.

35. When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

36. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

37. Give a beggar a dime and he'll bless you. Give him a dollar and he'll curse you for witholding the rest of your fortune. Poverty is a bag with a hole at the bottom.

38. I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II,I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does.

39. A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made, not to understand, but to feel, as crime.

40. It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. St. Vincent De Paul cautioned his disciples to deport themselves so that the poor 'will forgive them the bread you give them.'

41. Our 'overhead' expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded 'captains of industry,' financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.

42. There's always hope:.even when there isn't faith. And sometimes, without hope or faith, there must be charity

43. It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it. (549)

44. This Winter Help Work is also in the deepest sense a Christian work. When I see, as I so often do, poorly clad girls collecting with such infinite patience in order to care for those who are suffering from the cold while they themselves are shivering with cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a Christianity-- and in truth of a Christianity which can say with greater right than any other: This is the Christianity of an honest confession, for behind it stand not words but deeds.

45. Generosity: 'Take without forgetting, and give without remembering.'

46. I hope that Live Earth ends global warming the same way the Live Aid ended world poverty.

47. 'We have someone here today, from the smash hit show American Idol, we're thrilled to have him joining us today, because when it was made known that he would appear on this Telethon, the emails and the fan clubs that this young man has have sent us $30,000.00 just at the fact that he was here.

48. Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres.

49. We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization. Faith - in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships. Hope - renewed because we know so well the progress we have made. Charity - in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves.

50. Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

51. Sharing the food is to me more important than arguing about beliefs. Jesus, according to the gospels, thought so too.

52. To the Gods we ne'er can render Praise for every good they grant; Let us, with devotion tender, Minister to grief and want. Quenched be hate and wrath forever, Pardoned be our mortal foe- May our tears upbraid him never, No repentance bring him low!

53. Only help him who is not an idler.

54. It has always been my dream in life to help as many people as possible. That dream and many more have come true for me and my family, and I find my greatest rewards come from sharing what I have received with others. Emilio and I established this foundation to expand our charitale work in an effort ot help those less fortunate. Our focus with the foundation has always been to help the many inidividuals whose challenges have fallen through the cracks of the traditional charitable organizations.

55. Our focus with the [Gloria Estefan] foundation has always been to help the many individuals whose challenges have fallen through the cracks of the traditional charitable organizations.

56. This is an opening gift tht we are making in conjunction with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of half a million dollars.

57. We established [The Gloria Estefan Foundation] in 1993, because I was getting so many pitches from charities that I thought the best way to maximize our charity dollars was to establish a foundation, where you can do so many things. [The royalties from] four of my songs go directly to my foundation, and I don't have to bother people for money. I have been funding it myself all these years, from diffent concerts that I do that pay right to my foundation. It's what I love to do. It's something that makes me very happy. . . [The foundation has helped] from small things to large things. Every time there has been a natural disaster, we, thought the American Red Cross, have helped. Not just here , but in Nicaragua and Honduras. Obviously, Miami is very close to my heart.

58. We took portable showers, Pampers and clothes for kids [in a Hurricane Katrina shelter]. I sang for them and played the guitar . . . At least for a little while, they saw that someone wasn't forgetting them. It lifted their spirits, and I knew they were a little more comfortable when we left.

59. My foundation trys to help people that fall through the cracks, [people] that can't get help from big organizations . . . . We try to fill in where [other] people don't help out.

60. Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter. The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength. The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities. The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service-in the spirit that each is his brother's keeper.

61. Avoid cruelty and injustice for, on the Day of Judgment, the same will turn into several darknesses; and guard yourselves against miserliness; for this has ruined nations who lived before you.

62. Do not turn away a poor man...even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you...God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection.

63. (Each one) of you should save himself from the fire by giving even half of a date (in charity). And if you do not find a half date, then (by saying) a pleasant word (to your brethren).

64. 'I and the person who looks after an orphan and provides for him, will be in Paradise like this,' - putting his index and middle fingers together.

65. 'Mainly I've been dividing my time between working on my biceps by benchpressing Ferraris filled with supermodels and teaching the homeless to read.

66. 'Can I get 5,000 dollars?' 'Yeah, when Jesse Jackson gets a job.'

67. It's panhandling. . . That's the system we have, though. It's based on bribery.

68. For we accomplish these things not by spending money but by making the correct choice. Almsgiving above all else requires money, but even this shines with a brighter luster when the alms are given from our poverty. The widow who paid in the two mites was poorer than any human, but she outdid them all.

69. Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, 'This is my body,' and made it so by his word, is the same that said, 'You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.' Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.

70. I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.

71. Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the elite citizen's imitation of noblesse oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to being citizens.

72. The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation.

73. Ten per cent of our neighbours survive on charity. 10 per cent of Canadians eat through charity. 10 per cent. Surely if you were prime minister or minister of trade or of industry, you would wake up each day thinking that, for reasons that escape you, the central policy chosen to drive the economy is not working. It is not working because it is not meeting the needs of a democracy in which legitimacy lies with the citizenry.

74. Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.

75. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. - This is was commonly mistakely to be discribed as Laozi's, but this is a rumor.

76. Martin's soul grew glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.

77. I am sternly opposed to giving alms to sturdy beggars.

78. Given Mr. Limbaugh's history of support for our soldiers, it would be unfair for me to assume his statements were intended to personally indict combat soldiers simply because they didn't share his own views on the war in Iraq.

79. God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table; & hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door, to put in his claim for a part of it.

80. 'It was as if he had heard what I wanted,' she said. But a skilled magician can do that, and it would be wrong to see Sai Baba as a conjurer. He has channeled the hopes and energies of his followers into constructive directions, both spiritual and philanthropic.' [17]

81. But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.

82. Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous.

83. My dear pastor, in my tent last night, after a fatiguing day's service, I remembered that I failed to send a contribution for our colored Sunday school. Enclosed you will find a check for that object, which please acknowledge at your earliest convenience and oblige yours faithfully.

84. Trinny Woodall is a prime-time star, but is proper posh with mighty connections, as demonstrated by the six-figure sums she blagged from richer friends on Comic Relief does the Apprentice.

85. True Charity, a plant divinely nurs'd.

86. To one on the point of death imperfect charity necessarily brings with it great fear, which in itself alone is enough to produce the punishment of purgatory, and impedes entrance into the kingdom.

87. Prince Antoine Bibesco, when asked (by her mother, Margot Asquith) why his wife didn't do more 'good works', such as visiting a hospital, replied, 'Dearest Margot, Elizabeth visits a hospital three times a week, with the result that the lame walk, the blind see, and the dumb would speak if they could get a word in edgeways.'

88. During the election, Prime Minister Harper ended some of his speeches with the words 'God bless Canada.' Indeed, the prophet Isaiah says that God blesses you when you 'share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house' (Isaiah 58.7). We urge the Prime Minister to spend tax dollars now in a way that will bring the homeless poor into their own house, and allow them the dignity of sharing their bread with others.

89. Let not poor Nelly starve.

90. American Himalayan Foundation

91. Charity is a fashionable virtue in our time; it is lit up by the gigantic firelight of Dickens. Hope is a fashionable virtue to-day; our attention has been arrested for it by the sudden and silver trumpet of Stevenson. But faith is unfashionable, and it is customary on every side to cast against it the fact that it is a paradox. Everybody mockingly repeats the famous childish definition that faith is 'the power of believing that which we know to be untrue.' Yet it is not one atom more paradoxical than hope or charity. Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and, eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. Now the old pagan world went perfectly straightforward until it discovered that going straightforward is an enormous mistake. It was nobly and beautifully reasonable, and discovered in its death-pang this lasting and valuable truth, a heritage for the ages, that reasonableness will not do. The pagan age was truly an Eden or golden age, in this essential sense, that it is not to be recovered.

92. Seven kinds of people will be sheltered under the shade of God on the Day of Judgment...They are: a just ruler, a young man who passed his youth in the worship and service of God...one whose heart is attached to the mosque...two people who love each other for the sake of God...a man who is invited to sin...but declines, saying 'I fear God'...one who spends his charity in secret, without making a show...and one who remembers God in solitude so that his eyes overflow.

93. (Explaining why he doesn't personally deliver food to the needy) You don't go down there; you gonna die if you go down there. You might think you doing a good thing but you'll be dead of a gunshot wound before you even get the frozen dinner out of your car.

94. For the tourist's brown pennies scattered at the old church door, the ragged papooses jump, and bite the dust.

95. I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. I am a libertine, but three families residing in your area have for five years lived off my charity, and I have saved them from the farthest depths of poverty. I am a libertine, but I have saved a deserter from death, a deserter abandoned by his entire regiment and by his colonel. I am a libertine, but at Evry, with your whole family looking on, I saved a child-at the risk of my life-who was on the verge of being crushed beneath the wheels of a runaway horse-drawn cart, by snatching the child from beneath it. I am a libertine, but I have never compromised my wife's health. Nor have I been guilty of the other kinds of libertinage so often fatal to children's fortunes: have I ruined them by gambling or by other expenses that might have deprived them of, or even by one day foreshortened, their inheritance? Have I managed my own fortune badly, as long as I have had a say in the matter? In a word, did I in my youth herald a heart capable of the atrocities of which I today stand accused?... How therefore do you presume that, from so innocent a childhood and youth, I have suddenly arrived at the ultimate of premeditated horror? No, you do not believe it. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent.'

96. charity begins in your own family. 'Charitable spirits' mustn't forget to keep their own slates clean, to address problems and inequities within their own four walls with decency and fairness before trying to make the world a better place. People who aren't willing to do that are not sincere in their claim to benevolence.

97. ...I am delighted to see how many young boys and girls have come forward to obtain honourable marks of recognition on this occasion,-if any effectual good is to be done to them, it must be done by teaching and encouraging them and helping them to help themselves. All the people who pretend to take your own concerns out of your own hands and to do everything for you, I won't say they are imposters; I won't even say they are quacks; but I do say they are mistaken people. The only sound, healthy description of countenancing and assisting these institutions is that which teaches independence and self-exertion...When I say you should help yourselves- and I would encourage every man in every rank of life to rely upon self-help more than on assistance to be got from his neigbours-there is One who helps us all, and without whose help every effort of ours is in vain; and there is nothing that should tend more, and there is nothing that should tend more to make us see the beneficence of God Almighty than to see the beauty as well as the usefulness of these flowers, these plants, and these fruits which He causes the earth to bring forth for our comfort and advantage.

98. So long as faith with freedom reigns And loyal hope survives, And gracious charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For intellect or will, And men are free to think and act, Life is worth living still.

99. I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

100. Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor or wealth, that is certain; for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech You Hignesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages.