Better World Quotes - Kindness Quotes

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
-- Aesop

...every day you should reach out and touch someone.
People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back..
-- Maya Angelou

"Living the truth in your heart without compromise brings kindness into the world. Attempts at kindness that compromise your heart cause only sadness."
-- Anonymous 18th century monk

There is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good.
-- Henri Amiel

“Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.”
-- Henri Amiel

"It is easy to perform a good action,
but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions."
-- Aristotle

* "It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others."
-- Aristotle

"Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself."
-- Louis Auchincloss.

"For the cause that lacks assistance,
The wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do."
-- George Linnaeus Banks -- What I live for

I don't worry about people misinterpreting my kindness for weakness.
Jason Bateman

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."
-- Saul Bellow

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
-- The Bible: Luke VI.31 (circa 75 A.D.)

"Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?"
-- William Blake

"Kindness is a language which the dumb can speak, the deaf can understand."
-- C.N. Bovee

“Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.”
-- Robert Brault

* "I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings...I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels."
-- Pearl S. Buck

It's also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others.
I've been helped by acts of kindness from strangers.
That's why we're here, after all, to help others.
-- Carol Burnett

"Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on;
'Twas not given for thee alone, Pass it on;
Let it travel down the years,
Let it wipe another's tears.
Pass it on."
-- Rev. Henry Burton

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
-- Leo Buscaglia

"Choose being kind over being right and you'll be right every time."
-- Richard Carlson

Little deeds of kindness, little words of love, help to make earth happy like the heaven above.
-- Julia Carney

“You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How?
By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged.
Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”
-- Dale Carnegie

* How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life, you will have been all of these.
~ George Washington Carver

* "Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it."
-- Pablo Casals

"The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it."
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin

* Giving connects two people, the giver and the receiver, and this connection gives birth to a new sense of belonging.
-- Deepak Chopra

"Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
-- Charles Caleb Colton (1825)

"What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others."
-- Confucius (circa 500 B.C.)

"A disciple having asked for a definition of charity, the Master said LOVE ONE ANOTHER."
-- Confucius

"Forget injuries;
never forget kindness."
-- Confucius

* The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.
-- Norman Cousins

* If compassion was the motivating factor behind all of our decisions, would our world not be a completely different place?
-- Sheryl Crow

* When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
-- The Dalai Lama

Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.”
-- The Dalai Lama

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
-- The Dalai Lama

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
-- The Dalai Lama

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
-- The Dalai Lama

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
-- The Dalai Lama

I THEREFORE PLEDGE ...
TO CONDUCT myself in a harmonious, peaceable manner, avoiding selfish or arrogant behaviour, giving love and kindness to those around me.
-- Guy Dauncy

* One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.
-- Ellen DeGeneres

Here are the values that I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.
-- Ellen DeGeneres

"To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give."
-- Taisen Deshimaru

* "Hugs can do great amounts of good — especially for children."
-- Princess Diana

Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.
-- Princess Diana

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
-- Emily Dickinson

* “Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.”
-- Ani DiFranco

"Compassion is the chief law of human existence."
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

* "Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time."
-- Marian Wright Edelman

* "Only a life lived for others is worth living."
-- Albert Einstein

Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein

* "The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth..."
-- Albert Einstein

* "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

* You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To share often and much...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it."
-- Epictetus (2nd century)

"Happy were men if they but understood
There is no safety but in doing good"
-- John Fountain.

* ...where there is hatred, let me sow love: where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
-- Saint Francis of Assisi

* He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
-- Benjamin Franklin

* Be the change you want to see in the world.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* "The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Everyone responds to kindness.
-- Richard Gere

"Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you."
-- Andre Gide

"Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

* "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."
-- Whoopi Goldberg

* No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."

-- Emma Goldman

“Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.”
-- Maxim Gorky

Let us choose life and love, and happily use our selves up in loving service to one another.
-- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

* We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government, then we lose our ability to dispense justice and human kindness. Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption that have come between us and our self-governance.
-- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.
-- Stephen Grellet

"If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt...It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics."
-- Gurdjieff

* Though we all have the fear and the seeds of anger within us, we must learn not to water those seeds and instead nourish our positive qualities – those of compassion, understanding, and loving kindness.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Only your compassion and your loving kindness are invincible, and without limit.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
-- Audrey Hepburn

"Compassionate the mountains rise
Dim with the wistful dimness of old eyes
That, having looked on life time out of mind,
Know that the simple gift of being kind
Is greater than all the wisdom of the wise."
-- DuBose Heyward

"Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind."
-- Eric Hoffer.

* “Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”
-- Hubert Humphrey

* "Let us be kinder to one another."
-- Aldous Huxley, on his deathbed

"To make one good action succeed another, is the perfection of goodness."
-- Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib (7th century A.D.)

It's no use trying to be clever--we are all clever here; just try to be kind--a little kind.
-- F.J. Foakes Jackson

We'll fight, not out of spite
For someone must stand up for what's right
'Cause where there's a man who has no voice
There ours shall go singing
My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
I am never broken
In the end only kindness matters
In the end only kindness matters
-- Jewel

* In the end only kindness matters
-- Jewel

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything."
-- Samuel Johnson

Kindness ... loving people more than they deserve.
-- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do."
-- Helen Keller

Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.
-- Helen Keller

As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency.
-- Caroline Kennedy

* “I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas”
-- John F. Kennedy

* "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?"
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The person who doesn't fit in with our notions of who is worthy of our love -- the bag lady at the corner, the strange old man who rides through town on a three-wheel bike all strung up with flags -- is just the person who, by not fitting into our patterns, insists that we expand not only our views but also our capacity to love. Today, see if you can stretch your heart and expand your love so that it touches no only those to whom you can give it easily, but also to those who need it so much."
-- Daphne Rose Kingma

"If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow."
-- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
-- Lao Tzu

It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.
-- Annie Lennox

"I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."
-- Abraham Lincoln

In the long run, the power of kindness can redeem beyond the power of force to destroy. There is a vast reservoir of kindness that we can no longer afford do disregard.
-- John A. MacAulay

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."
-- Norman MacEswan.

"It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom."
-- Maurice Maeterlinck.

* Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too.
-- Mairead Corrigan Maguire

"There are eight rungs in charity. The highest is when you help a man to help himself."
-- Moses Maimonides

"Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig."
-- Marcus Aurelius (2nd century A.D.)

"Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you."
-- Marcus Aurelius (2nd century A.D.)

"Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours."
-- Marcus Aurelius (2nd century A.D.)

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one!"
-- Marcus Aurelius (2nd century A.D.)

"We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life."
-- Edwin Markham

* None of us has gotten where we are solely by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. We got here because somebody bent down and helped us.
-- Thurgood Marshall

But then there are magical, beautiful things in the world.
There's incredible acts of kindness and bravery,
and in the most unlikely places, and it gives you hope.
-- Dave Matthews

* Love for other people. I think that’s another very important part of morality, being genuinely compassionate and concerned about the feelings and well being of other people, especially those that depend on you directly.
-- George McGovern

So, I think that’s the centerpiece of morality: Don’t lie. But to do that, you have to go a step further and find out what the truth is. You know, it’s easy to say, “I’ll never tell a lie.” But if you say, “I’m going to speak the truth,” you’re going to have to work damn hard to find out what the truth is. The next thing is just plain, old, simple kindness: to other people, to your family. Love for other people. I think that’s another very important part of morality, being genuinely compassionate and concerned about the feelings and well being of other people, especially those that depend on you directly.
-- George McGovern

“Send the light of your own loving ahead of you. When you get there, the loving will have prepared a place for you. Be kind, gentle, and enjoy the journey.”
-- Peter McWilliams

"There is no better exercise for your heart than reaching down and helping to lift someone up."
-- Bernard Meltzer

"...Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilisation, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every school."
-- Yehudi Menuhin

* "The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another."
-- Thomas Merton

"If we really understood the power that we have with someone else, how we affect them, the tracks that we leave on someone, what a different world that would be." -- Noelani Musicaro

Kindness is not a thought process, it's completely from the heart. It's about not looking away. It's about standing up and being defiant and seeing when something needs to be done -- not being afraid to stand up and step up, but to stay present with that person, whether it's someone we know or not. -- Noelani Musicaro

We can really make a difference in the world, just one heart, one kind word at a time.
-- Noelani Musicaro

Kindness is a universal language. It cuts across all personalities and gender and nationalities and color and creed. It's just who we really are inside.
-- Noelani Musicaro

"Love in action is service to the world. There are those who are in need of some loving kindness in the unique way that you can provide. Give of yourself and let the leaven of love be your guide."
-- Lynne Namka (LynneNamka.com)

"There are those who are in need of some loving kindness in the unique way that you can provide."
-- Lynne Namka (LynneNamka.com)

I'm a big believer in acts of kindness, no matter how small.
-- Liam Neeson

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
-- Henri Nouwen

* “I came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health. I said, 'There's nothing that I can do for you that you can't do for yourself.' He said, 'Oh yes you can. Just hold my hand. I think that that would help.' So I sat with him a while then I asked him how he felt. He said, 'I think I'm cured.'”
-- Conor Oberst

* "If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."
-- William Penn

* There is perhaps no surer road to peace than the one that starts from little islands and oases of genuine kindness, islands and oases constantly growing in number and being continually joined together until eventually they ring the world.
-- Father Dominique Pire

"In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity."
-- Alexander Pope (1733)

"It is his nature, not his standing, that makes the good man."
-- Publilius Syrus. (1st century B.C.)

Kindness is tenderness. Kindness is love, but perhaps greater than love...Kindness is good will. Kindness says, "I want you to be happy.
-- Randolph Ray

* The end result of kindness is that it draws people to you.
-- Anita Roddick

* Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

* The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task.
-- Joseph Rotblat

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom."
-- Theodore Isaac Rubin

* The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
-- Bertrand Russell

* "When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you."
-- Susan Sarandon

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
-- Albert Schweitzer

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.
-- Albert Schweitzer

And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.
-- Martin Scorsese

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
-- Seneca

"Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The flower of kindness will grow. Maybe not now, but it will some day.
And in kind that kindness will flow, for kindness grows in this way."
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

"The good deed you do today, for a brother or sister in need
Will come back to you some day, for humanity's a circle in deed."
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

“Life is short. Time is fleeting. Realize the Self. Purity of the heart is the gateway to God. Aspire. Renounce. Meditate. Be good; do good. Be kind; be compassionate. Inquire, know Thyself.”
-- Swami Sivananda

"You have not lived a perfect day...unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
-- Ruth Smeltzer

"One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession."
-- Sophocles, 409 BC

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self- interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
-- John Steinbeck

Well, I think when we can turn to the person sitting next to us and really see them with kindness and see ourselves reflected back - when there's some dignity and compassion traveling back and forth.
-- Sharon Stone

Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want and do.
-- Emmanuel Swedenborg

"You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot do by force."
-- Publilius Syrus (1st century BC)

"The beginning and end of Torah is performing acts of loving kindness."
-- The Talmud

"Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting." -- Mother Teresa

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.
Mother Teresa

* "Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless."
-- Mother Teresa

* Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.
~ U Thant

* "Friends . . . They are kind to each other's hopes. They cherish each other's dreams."
-- Henry David Thoreau

* "The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them."
-- Leo Tolstoy

* Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
-- Mark Twain

I guess at the end of the day, all women like to be appreciated and treated with respect and kindness.
-- Sofia Vergara

"Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work.”
-- William Arthur Ward

“If you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path.”
-- Mary Webb

* The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?"
-- Simone Weil

* "Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself."
-- Walt Whitman

* I'm trying to show by my actions that you can make a far better world if you just care enough. That's all you have to do. It's no big deal. One act of kindness a day can do it.
-- Betty Williams

* May we not succumb to thoughts of violence and revenge today, but rather to thoughts of mercy and compassion. We are to love our enemies that they might be returned to their right minds.
-- Marianne Williamson

"The best portions of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts,
Of kindness and love."
-- William Wordsworth