Quotes on Giving

They want us to give up another chunk of our tribal land. This is not the first time or the last time.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

God gives where he finds empty hands.

I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling—it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful.

It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.

My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular.

My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.

We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.

Could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes, or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?" — "No, Curdie: that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me — not to know me myself.

Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.

If God gives you something you can do, why in God's name wouldn't you do it?

There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Estranged from the tribe that gives no protection, What happens to the soul that hates its reflection?

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him

Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

The law always limits every power it gives.

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.