Charity.
To love human beings insofar as they are nothing.
That is, to love them as God does.
-Simone Weil
When
we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity.
Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and
finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off
our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity
only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the
poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without
worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our
consciences. -Muhammad Yunu, Banker to
the Poor
Charity, if
you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or
compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.
-Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation
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
A bone to the
dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are
just as hungry as the dog. -Jack London
Behold I do
not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.
-Walt Whitman
Better
the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of
charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in
the ice of its own indifference. -Franklin
D. Roosevelt
The
Hebrew word for "charity," tzedakah, simply means
"justice" and as this suggests, for Jews, giving to the
poor is no optional extra but an essential part of living a just
life. -Peter Singer, The Life You Can
Save
Charity
is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible.
Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know
to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which
belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the
virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and
eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity,
which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the
deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the
undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at
all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at
the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the
virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that
moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable
it begins to be useful. -G.K.
Chesterton, Heretics
Charity
even for one person does not make sense except in terms of an
effort to love all Creation in response to the Creator's love for
it. -Wendell Berry, The Art of
the Commonplace
Charity
degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.
-George Sand
The
charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds ceases to be
charity, and is only pride and
ostentation. -William Hutton
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. -Robert McAfee Brown
Our
prayers for others flow more easily than those for ourselves.
This shows we are made to live by charity.
-C.S. Lewis
I
believe when you integrate charity in your craft and not just
think of the fame and riches it would entitle you with, you will
feel this true sense of fulfillment. Carry on your mission, of
where God destined you to be- to use His gifts in good ways and
not just for yourself. -Elizabeth E.
Castillo
Love
is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more
and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each
other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people
say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that
way. But if we are to live together, and not die together,
we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is
absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this
planet. -Bertrand
Russell
The
life of a person consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming
dreams, but in active charity and in willing
service. -Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow
Every
good act is charity. Our true wealth hereafter is the good that we
do in this world to our fellows. -Moliere
I
think it's important that we give back to society and our fellow
human regardless of our professions. We all need help at
times. And when we support each other, we're all a little
stronger. -Rhonda Hopkins
Charity
is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent
of it. -John D. Rockefeller
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