quotations about charity
We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man.
MAIMONIDES
A Maimonides Reader
Charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
A charitable man is like an apple tree--he gives his fruit and is silent; the philanthropist is like the successful hen.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Charity is the note that resolves the discord.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Quaestiones disputatae: De caritate
The living need charity more than the dead.
GEORGE ARNOLD
The Jolly Old Pedagogue
Charity is ... a universal remedy against discord, and an holy cement for mankind.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
When Charity walks into the lower places of Want, we most distinctly see the purity of her robes.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
In charity there is no excess.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature,", Essays
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.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
speech accepting the renomination for the Presidency, June 27, 1936
You're a few years overdue.
I spent them waiting here for you.
Now your charity's refused,
I can name a penance for abuse.
THE GET UP KIDS
"Overdue", On a Wire
He who hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes
Once you go on welfare it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma that you were a charity case. You're scarred for life.
JEANNETTE WALLS
The Glass Castle
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.
WALT WHITMAN
Leaves of Grass
In a word, charity and faith make one as essence and form do, for the essence of faith is charity, and the form of charity is faith ; from which it is evident that faith without charity is like form without essence, which is not anything, and that charity without faith is like essence without form, which is also not anything.
JOHN FAULKNER POTTS
The Swedenborg Concordance
If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.
C.S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism.
ANTHONY DE MELLO
Awareness
I as little fear that God will damn a man that has charity, as I hope that the priests can save one who has not.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.
SRI AUROBINDO
Thoughts and Aphorisms
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall: but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel nor man come in danger by it.
JOHN LOCKE
"Of Goodness, The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays