Generous Quotes

I am open to receiving the generous gifts of Spirit.
I hold no expectations or demands on the form, the timing,
or the color of the wrapping on the bountiful gifts of Spirit
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Know that the true essence of the Golden Rule
is always being compassionate, kind,
generous, and being in service to others.
Compelling others to behave as you wish
them to behave in the name of the
Golden Rule is a corruption of a sacred principle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize.
The first is gentleness;
the second is frugality;
the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others.
Be gentle and you can be bold;
be frugal and you can be generous;
avoid putting yourself before others
and you can become a leader among men.
- Lao Tzu

Living Into the Great Paradox,
I strive toward my vision,
while accepting gratefully whatever life serves up.
I work to bring about my vision of the future,
which is based on my value system of what is right,
just, noble, compassionate, generous, humane, peaceful, and loving.
Simultaneously, I accept that my vision
is based on only my opinions and prejudices,
and I honor all points of view and value systems,
no matter how different from my own.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
- Lao Tzu

We are composed of self-contradictions.
Each of us is loving in some moments - hateful in others.
Patient and calm sometimes - harried by urgency at others.
Understanding - and self-absorbed.
Reassuring - and sarcastic.
Generous - and greedy.
Trusting - and jealous.
Comforting - and snappish.
Original - and stuck in a rut.
Thankful - and needy.
Forgiving - and vengeful.
Nurturing ourself - and stuffing ourself with fast food.
Honoring our bodies - and overstressing.
Being Joyful - and Suffering.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Be not like the sugarcane -
do not hold your sweetness inside.
Be like the fruit tree -
be generous with your best.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie (inspired by Tagore)

While most managers spend their time attempting
to predict the future accurately -
and while that's valuable -
the best managers are able to generate a future
which was not going to happen otherwise -
that is, a future which was not predictable.
- Werner Erhard

Give your time and efforts freely or not at all.
When you are tempted to say,
"Oh, if I have to, I'll skip my golf game
and watch my daughter play soccer," don't do it.
Either generate the heart-felt emotion
to make the free-will gift,
"I'd love to watch your game today, Sandy,"
or the honesty to decline the request gracefully.
Martyrdom doesn't create happiness
for any of the parties involved.
An honest, "No" is preferable to a coerced "Yes."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is very important to generate a good attitude,
a good heart, as much as possible.
From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term
for both yourself and others will come.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Take some time in a quiet place to contemplate
the balance between being of service -
both to this generation and to generations yet unborn -
and renewing your vitality with play and celebration.
Without play, one becomes old and dry.
Without service, life becomes meaningless.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Faith is the highest passion in a human being.
Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
- Soren Kierkegaard

The greatest discovery of any generation
is that a human being
can alter his life by
altering his attitude
- William James

There are times, sir, when men of good conscience
cannot blindly follow orders.
- Captain Picard, STAR TREK: The Next Generation

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau

Things are only impossible until they're not.
- Jean-Luc Picard, character in STAR TREK: The Next Generation

Friendship must dare to risk, or it's not friendship.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation

The philosophy of the school room in one generation
will be the philosophy of government in the next.
- Abraham Lincoln

It is incumbent on every generation
to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would
save one-half the wars of the world.
- Thomas Jefferson

The awareness that health is dependent
upon habits that we control
makes us the first generation in history
that to a large extent determines its own destiny.
- Jimmy Carter

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind
in the history of the world or to make it the last.
- John F. Kennedy

We will have to repent in this generation,
not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people,
but for the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The claim "I was only following orders" has been used
to justify too many tragedies in our history.
- Captain Picard of the television series
STAR TREK: The Next Generation

Let the word go forth from this time and place,
to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed
to a new generation of Americans -
born in this century, tempered by war,
disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.
- John F. Kennedy

Martyrs cannot be silenced.
- the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation

Each age, it is found, must write its own books;
or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,
with a right, by the will of its majority,
to bind themselves, but none to
bind the succeeding generation,
more than the inhabitants of another country.
- Thomas Jefferson

Great men, unknown to their generation,
have their fame among the great who have preceded them,
and all true worldly fame subsides
from their high estimate beyond the stars.
- Henry David Thoreau

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival,
liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness
is a planet whose resources are devoted
to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
- Jimmy Carter

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation,
a ship going to discover the New World.
And the Beatles were in the crow's nest of that ship.
- John Lennon

Men in general judge more from
appearances than from reality. All
men have eyes, but few have
the gift of penetration.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval -
a thing which, to the general run of the human race,
is more dreaded than wolves and death.
- Mark Twain

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

Contrary to general belief,
I do not believe that friends are necessarily
the people you like best,
they are merely the people who got there first.
- Peter Ustinov

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver.
The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver,
the less he demands in slaughter.
- Winston Churchill

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
- Thomas Jefferson

Experience demands that man is
the only animal which devours his own kind,
for I can apply no milder term to
the general prey of the rich on the poor.
- Thomas Jefferson

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness,
the general mind must be strengthened by education.
- Thomas Jefferson

I think with the Romans, that the general of today
should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
- Thomas Jefferson

In most communities it is illegal
to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly.
Should it not be considered serious international misconduct
to manufacture a general war scare
in an effort to achieve local political aims?
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for
grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
- Charles Darwin

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

Nuts.
- General Anthony Clement McAuliffe
responding to a German demand to surrender his
101st Airborne Division in Belgium during World War II.

You have made people listen.
You have made people care, and you have taught us
that whether we are poor or prosperous,
we have only one world to share.
You have taught young people that
they do have the power to change the world.
- Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, to Bono. (November 1999)

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire,
men cannot live without a spiritual life.
- The Buddha

The highest proof of the spirit is love.
Love is the eternal thing which men can already
on earth possess as it really is.
- Albert Schweitzer

There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who never walks save where he sees
men's tracks, makes no discoveries.
- J. G. Holland

Instead of comparing our lot with that
of those who are more fortunate than we are,
we should compare it with the lot
of the great majority of our fellow men.
It then appears that we are among the privileged.
- Helen Keller

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Women want mediocre men,
and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.
- Margaret Mead

The reason why men do not obey us,
is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The problems of the world cannot possibly
be solved by skeptics or cynics
whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.
We need men who can dream of things that never were.
- John F. Kennedy

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
- Abraham Lincoln

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau

Great men or men of great gifts
you shall easily find,
but symmetrical men never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil.
If they would only expend the same
amount of energy loving their fellow men,
the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
- Helen Keller

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

The majority of men meet with failure
because of their lack of persistence
in creating new plans to take
the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill

A man likes his wife to be
just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness,
and just stupid enough to admire it.
- Israel Zangwill

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Inspirational Quotes

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