Books
13 Book Quotes About Giving For The Holidays
Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, it's time for the yearly tradition that really matters: #GivingTuesday, the annual day of charity and goodwill that is dedicated to kicking of the holiday season the right way. to help get you in the charitable spirit, I've rounded up book quotes about giving, kindness, and humility that will warm your heart.
For the last five years, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving has been deemed #GivingTuesday, and entire day dedicated to global giving and charitable acts. All over the globe, people donate their time, money, and resources to causes that make a real difference, whether they be nonprofits that support women's education, activist groups that fight for civil rights, charities that help provide clean water to people who need it, or local organizations that support the direct needs of their community. It's a touching annual event that everyone should get involved with. Besides, what better way to get in the spirit of the holidays, a time of year that honors not just merriment and cheer, but charity and goodwill.
Ready to kick of the holiday spirit the right way? Check out these 13 book quotes about giving to help you feel the love and kindness this time of year brings.
1. “I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
2. “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
3. “The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch
4. “While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah
5. “If they had had a different neighbour, one less self-absorbed and more concerned for others, a man of normal, charitable instincts, their desperate state would not have gone unnoticed, their distress-signals would have been heard, and perhaps they would have been rescued by now. Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single fateful word. They are les miserables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need of charity?”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
6. “Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
7. “No one has ever become poor by giving.”
― Anne Frank, Diary of Anne Frank
8. “There was a certain luxury to charity that she could not identify with and did not have. To take "charity" for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know—perhaps it came from having had a yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this. ...Ifemelu wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be from the country of people who gave and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could therefore bask in the grace of having given. To be among those who could afford copious pity and empathy.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
9. “Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
10. “The happiness he gives is quite as great, as if it cost a fortune.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
11. “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, Eat, Pray, Love
12. “Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.”
― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
13. “Anyone who attacks individual charity, attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Images: Jessica Lia/Photodisc/Getty Images; Giphy (5)
