994 Quotes About Charity

I interviewed my dad on video in his final weeks. When I asked about his work and finding meaning through helping others, he responded, "I don't think you can be focused on, 'Oh gee, I want to make a difference.' It has to be spontaneous. If it's not...there's some kind of egotistical thing going on. That's a red flag. You hope you impact people on the deepest level you are capable of at the time. Sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don't. You're trying.

Our prayers for others flow more easily than those for ourselves. This shows we are made to live by charity.

The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds, ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.

The principle of neighborhood at home always implies the principle of charity abroad. (pg. 260, The Idea of a Local Economy)

In college I took a social psychology course, something I thought useful for a career in advertising. Psychologists tested the story of the Good Samaritan. What they learned gives us reason to pause. The greatest determinant of who stopped to help the stranger in need was not compassion, morality, or religious creed. It was those who had the time. Makes me wonder if I have time to do good. Apparently, Angel does.

I've purged myself of worldly goods; half my stuff is either being sold or going to charity. I need to go shopping.

The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.

Once you go on welfare it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma that you were a charity case. You're scarred for life.

One important aspect of justice, Jose Miranda reminds us, involves the restoration of what has been stolen. Giving food to the hungry or clothing to the naked is not a charitable handout but an exercise in simple justice - restoring to the poor what is rightfully theirs, what has been taken from them unjustly.