Charity

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In charity there is no excess. ~ Francis Bacon

Charity is a term which referrs to the quality or virtue of unlimited love and kindness, and the practice of benevolent giving and caring.

Contents

Quotes [edit]

Charity itself fulfills the law.
And who can sever love from charity? ~ William Shakespeare
  • Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim.
  • He is rich who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness.
  • Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world.
  • Certainly it is a heaven upon earth to have a man's mind to move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
  • Charity and treating begin at home.
    • John Fletcher, Wit without Money (c. 1614; published 1639), scene 2
  • Let them learn first to show pity at home.
    • John Fletcher, Wit without Money (c. 1614; published 1639), scene 2. Marston—Histrio-Matrix. 3. 165
  • No farther seek his merits to disclose,
    Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
    (There they alike in trembling hope repose),
    The bosom of his Father and his God.
    • Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750), Epitaph
  • There is no charitable purpose which is not a benevolent purpose.
    • Lord Langdale, M.R., Kendall v. Granger (1842), 5 Beav. 302; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 26
  • We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man.
    • Maimonides, as quoted in A Maimonides Reader (1972) by Isadore Twersky, p. 135
  • I do not see any difference between a gift to keep in repair what is called "God's house" and a gift to keep in repair the churchyard round it, which is often called "God's acre."
    • North, J., In re Vaughan, Vaughan v. Thomas (1886), L. R. 33 C. D. 192; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 26
  • In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,
    But all mankind's concern is charity.
  • In a just world, there would be no possibility of 'charity'.
  • Iniquum est conlapsis manum non porrigere; commune hoc ius generis humani est.
    • It is wrong not to give a hand to the fallen. This right is common to the whole human race.
    • Seneca the Elder, Controversiae , Book 1, Chapter 1, sect. 14; translation from Norman T. Pratt Seneca's Drama (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) p. 140
  • I believe there is no sentiment he has such faith in as that "charity begins at home"
    And his, I presume, is of that domestic sort which never stirs abroad at all.
  • To give to the needy alone is charity. All the rest is investment for a return.
  • To receive is bad, even for good cause; and to give is good even if there is no Heaven.
  • Wiping out the hunger of the Have-nots, is the treasury in which the Haves should deposit their wealth.
  • Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity, so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace without any other arms but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for himself, and our neighbours for God. The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations [edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 106-107.
  • In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do.
  • Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
  • The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.
  • No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.
    • Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
  • Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
    • I Corinthians, XIII. 1
  • Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
    • I Corinthians, XIII. 2
  • Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.
    • I Corinthians, XIII. 4
  • And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
    • I Corinthians, XIII. 13
  • True Charity, a plant divinely nurs'd.
  • When your own courtyard thirsts, do not pour the water abroad.
    • Greek Proverb
  • Meek and lowly, pure and holy,
    Chief among the "blessed three."
  • In silence, * * *
    Steals on soft-handed Charity,
    Tempering her gifts, that seem so free,
    By time and place,
    Till not a woe the bleak world see,
    But finds her grace.
    • John Keble, The Christian Year, The Sunday After Ascension Day, Stanza 6
  • He is truly great who hath a great charity.
    • Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter III. Dibdin's translation
  • In necessasariis, unitas; In dubiis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas.
    • In things essential, unity; in doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity.
    • Rupertus Meldenius. So attributed by Canon Farrar at Croyden Church Congress, 1877. Also attributed to Melancthon. Quoted as "A gude saying o' auld Mr. Guthrie" in A Crack aboot the Kirk, appended to Memoirs of Norman Maclood, D.D., Volume I, p. 340
  • All crush'd and stone-cast in behaviour,
    She stood as a marble would stand,
    Then the Saviour bent down, and the Saviour
    In silence wrote on in the sand.
  • Charité bien ordonné commence par soy meme.
    • Charity well directed should begin at home.
    • Adrien de Montluc, La Comédie de Proverbes, Act III, scene 7
  • Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
    • I Peter, IV. 8
  • Soft peace she brings, wherever she arrives:
    She builds our quiet, as she forms our lives:
    Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even,
    And opens in each heart a little Heaven.
  • Our charity begins at home,
    And mostly ends where it begins.
  • Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.
  • Proximus sum egomet mihi.
    • Charity begins at home. (Free translation).
    • Terence, Andria, Act IV, scene 1. 12. Greek from Menander. See note to Andria, Act II, scene 5. 16. (Valpy's ed)
  • Let them learn first to show piety at home.
    • I Timothy. V. 4

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) [edit]

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • Charity — gently to hear, kindly to judge.
    • Attributed to William Shakespeare, p. 46 (other sources include only the phrase "gently to hear, kindly to judge").
  • Charity, like the sun, brightens every object on which it shines.
  • Charity is that rational and constant affection, which makes us sacrifice ourselves to the human race, as if we were united with it, so as to form one individual, partaking equally in its adversity and prosperity.
  • Why should not our solemn duties, and our hastening end, render us so united, that personal contention would be impossible, in a general sympathy quickened by the breath of a forbearing and pitying charity?
  • If thou neglectest thy love to thy neighbor, in vain thou professest thy love to God; for by thy love to God, the love to thy neighbor is begotten, and by the love to thy neighbor, thy love to God is nourished.
  • A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.
  • We may not substitute charity for godliness; but there is room for the Divine love in the heart which has been touched by the human.
  • An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.
  • Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this — love tolerating intolerance; charity covering, as with a vail, even the sin of the lack of charity.
  • There is no dearth of charity in the world in giving, but there is comparatively little exercised in thinking and speaking.
  • I have more confidence in the charity which begins in the home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the worldwide philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into egotism.
    • Mrs. Jameson, p. 48
  • Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own.

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