Purpose is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's needs.

- Frederick Buechner

Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return.

- Peace Pilgrim

It is not the gift, but the thought that counts.

- Henry Van Dyke

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.

- Marge Piercy

It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.

- Albert Einstein

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

- William Arthur Ward

In a true partnership, the kind worth striving for, the kind worth insisting on, and even, frankly, worth divorcing over, both people try to give as much or even a little more than they get. "Deserves" is not the point. And "owes" is certainly not the point. The pont is to make the other person as happy as we can, because their happiness adds to ours. The point is -- in the right hands, everything that you give, you get.

- Amy Bloom

Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe me."
Look what happens with
A love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

- Hafiz of Persia

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.

- Hafiz of Persia

Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.

- Dale Evans

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.

- Susan Sarandon

I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.

- George H. W. Bush

Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

- John Wesley

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

- Elbert Hubbard

Many people despise wealth, but few know how to give it away.

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Any ordinary favor we do for someone or any compassionate reaching out may seem to be going nowhere at first, but may be planting a seed we can't see right now. Sometimes we need to just do the best we can and then trust in an unfolding we can't design or ordain.

- Sharon Salzberg



But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up, and it cankers and breeds worms.

- George Macdonald



We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in it.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning



Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.

- John D. Rockefeller



Giving presents is a talent; to know what a person wants, to know when and how to get it, to give it lovingly and well. Unless a character possesses this talent there is no moment more annihilating to ease than that in which a present is received and given.

- Pamela Glenconner



Charity begins at home and justice begins next door.

- Charles Dickens



I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

- Maya Angelou



No one has ever become poor by giving.

- Anne Frank



Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.

from "The Matchmaker"

- Thornton Wilder



There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.

- Peyton Conway March



We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

- Winston Churchill



Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.

- Maimonides



Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.

- Barbara Bush



To look forward and not back,
To look out and not in, and
To lend a hand.

- Edward Everett Hale