59 Inspiring Generosity Quotes

In a world where kindness and altruism can sometimes feel in short supply, inspiring generosity can have a profound impact on our communities and ourselves. Acts of giving and selflessness not only uplift others but also enrich our own lives with a sense of purpose and fulfillment. To spark this beautiful cycle of generosity, we've curated a collection of 59 inspiring quotes. These words of wisdom, from renowned figures and thought leaders, serve as gentle reminders of the power of giving and the positive change it can bring. Whether you seek motivation to give back or simply want to infuse your day with positivity, these quotes are here to inspire and uplift. Join us in exploring these insightful reflections, and let them encourage you to embrace the spirit of generosity in your everyday life.

1. “It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.” - James Baldwin

2. “I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.” - Abraham Lincoln

3. “In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

4. “You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” - Kahlil Gibran

5. “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” - John Holmes

6. “Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

7. “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.” - Khalil Gibran

8. “Of the various kinds of intelligence, generosity is the first. Gienka Home from the Ball Bearing Plant (1943) ” - John Surowiecki

9. “Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.” - Confucius

10. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” - Anonymous

11. “When you win and the other fellow loses, what do you see? A losing face. There is great joy in losing and making the other person win and have a happy face. Who will be the happiest person? The one who brings happiness to others.” - Sri Swami Satchidananda

12. “People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one s promises reducing a partner s worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous.” - Steven Pinker

13. “Either the key to a man's wallet is in his heart, or the key to a man's heart is in his wallet. So, unless you express your charity, you are locked inside your greed.” - Noah BenShea

14. “When it comes to giving, some people stop at nothing.” - Vernon McLellan

15. “No, it is not a commonplace, sir! If up to now, for example, I have been told to 'love my neighbor,' and I did love him, what came of it?. . . What came of it was that I tore my caftan in two, shared it with my neighbor, and we were both left half naked, in accordance with the Russian proverb which says: If you chase several hares at once, you won't overtake any one of them. But science says: Love yourself before all, because everything in the world is based on self-interest. If you love only yourself, you will set your affairs up properly, and your caftan will also remain in one piece. And economic truth adds that the more properly arranged personal affairs and, so to speak, whole caftans there are in society, the firmer its foundations are and the better arranged its common cause. It follows that by acquiring for everyone, as it were, and working so that my neighbor will have something more than a torn caftan, not from private, isolated generosities now, but as a result of universal prosperity.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

16. “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.” - G.K. Chesterton

17. “Because when you love something, you want to do it all the time, even if no one is paying you for it. At least that's how I felt about drawing.” - Meg Cabot

18. “If truth doesn't set you free, generosity of spirit will.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

19. “Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?” - Samuel Johnson

20. “I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.” - Charles Dickens

21. “A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” - Steve Maraboli

22. “Because there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort.” - Carmen Agra Deedy

23. “People who love themselves come across as very loving, generous and kind; they express their self-confidence through humility, forgiveness and inclusiveness.” - Sanaya Roman

24. “Generosity is not in giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.” - Kahlil Gibran

25. “Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

26. “Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.[Verse 223]” - Siddhārtha Gautama

27. “(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.” - J.M. Coetzee

28. “That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.” - Simone de Beauvoir

29. “Generosity needs no logrolling.” - Toba Beta

30. “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?So do not worry, saying, ``What shall we eat?'' or ``What shall we drink?'' or ``What shall we wear?'' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.- Matthew 6:25-34” - Anonymous

31. “Impatient men are generous ones. Or haven't you learned that by now?” - Megan Chance

32. “Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgement, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.” - Frances Burney

33. “The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.The more he gives to others,the more he has for his own.” - Lao Tzu

34. “I come in a world of iron...to make a world of gold” - Dale Wasserman

35. “We trust to novels to train us in the practice of great indignations and great generositie.” - Henry James

36. “Don't touch my plumtree!Said my friend and saying so...Broke the branch for me” - Taigi

37. “Motivul pentru care ne place sa ii apreciem pe altii este ca ne e teama de noi insine. La baza optimismului se afla teroarea. Credem ca suntem generosi pentru ca il creditam pe aproapele nostru, care ne vor fi noua benefice" - Dorian Gray” - Oscar Wilde

38. “Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve and it had power to hear men and to bring them to safety long after all other resources were exhausted.” - Cormac McCarthy

39. “True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.” - Paulo Freire

40. “[T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.” - Tahir Shah

41. “It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.” - Saul Bellow

42. “If you can live with less of what you have. You can be more of who you are.” - Celso Cukierkorn

43. “Now yes, yes, creation sometimes screams a confusing message—fear, pain, grief. Fire burns, rivers flood, winds go hurricane, the earth shudders so hard it levels cities. But you must remember—this was not so in Eden. Mankind fell, surrendering this earth to the evil one. St. Paul says that creation groans for the day of its restoration (see Rom. 8:18–22), making it clear that everything is not as it was meant to be. People come to terrible conclusions when they assume this world is exactly as God intended. (An assumption that has wrought havoc in the sciences.) The earth is broken.Which only makes the beauty that does flow so generously that much more astounding. And reassuring.” - John Eldredge

44. “If you give what can be takes, you are not really giving.Take what you are given, not what you want to be given.Take what is given:Give what cannot be taken.” - Idries Shah

45. “God comes right out and tells us why he gives us more money than we need. It's not so we can find more ways to spend it. It's not so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children. It's not so we can insulate ourselves from needing God's provision. It's so we can give and give generously (2 Corinthians 8:14; 9:11)” - Randy Alcorn

46. “God doesn't make us rich so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children, or so we can insulate ourselves form needing God's provision. God gives us abundant material blessing so that we can give it away, and give it generously.” - Randy Alcorn

47. “As we draw on the grace of God He increases voluntary poverty all along the line. Always give the best you have got every time; never think about who you are giving it to; let other people take it or leave it as they choose. Pour out the best you have, and always be poor. Never reserve anything; never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives.” - Oswald Chambers

48. “God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ’s sake, and from no other motive. ” - Oswald Chambers

49. “The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward.” - Carol Ryrie Brink

50. “With genius, as with beauty -- all, well almost all, is forgiven.” - Susan Sontag

51. “I've been so bothered with my property, that I'm tired of it, and don't mean to save up any more, but give it away as I go along, and then nobody will envy me, or want to steal it, and I shan't be suspecting folks and worrying about my old cash.” - Louisa May Alcott

52. “You know, Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them - and, that way she missed love.” - Agatha Christie

53. “My generosity must bear a cost or there’d be no value in what you gain from it. There’d be no second thought for me, the tiny, humble mankin who came to save you. Is it right for a desperate soul to expect redemption for nothing? No. No, no. So, tell me, child, what will you give me in exchange for my services?"- from "Dimpellumpzki” - Richelle E. Goodrich

54. “God really is a Father, as displeased with a cramped, niggardly attitude of lack as with its opposite.” - Brother Andrew

55. “A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.” - Idries Shah

56. “Every sunrise is an invitation for us to arise and brighten someone's day.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

57. “Some people can be so generous when they give nothing away!” - Rossana Condoleo

58. “Righteousness and generosity are inseparable. The person whose heart longs for God also longs to give to others.” - Dillon Burroughs

59. “The emphasis in Scripture is not the amount we give, but the attitude with which we give.” - Dillon Burroughs