Society and the World

Generosity always wins favor, particularly when accompanied by modesty.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

The work of an unknown good man is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground greener.

If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.

If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.

Ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any the less good.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

He who cannot forgive others destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass.

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.

He best can pity who has felt the woe.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

The time is always right to do what is right.

The time is always right to do what is right.

There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas—and you have to work through it all.