Quotes about Kindness

The Stoic makes no differentiation between a small act of kindness by a simple person and a great act of virtue from a learned sage. Virtue is virtue, and in both cases the result is happiness for the one who is virtuous.

Keep thyself therefore, truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, tender-hearted, strong and vigorous to undergo anything that becomes thee.

With each person you meet, remind yourself that you share a common humanity. You are members of the same family. They may not know this, but you do—so show them by the way you treat them.

Similarly, man is born for deeds of kindness; and when he has done a kindly action, or otherwise served the common welfare, he has done what he was made for, and has received his quittance.

Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.

I have no right to do myself an injury. Have I ever injured anyone else if I could avoid it?

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does—or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes? 21.

We're all human beings. Why hate anyone, flatter anyone, lord over anyone, or bow before anyone?

Marcus sought by-laws to protect the weak, to make the lot of the slaves less hard, to stand in place of father to the fatherless.

If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, "a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness," and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.

It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to thee that they are kinsmen, and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrong-doer has done thee no harm, for he has not made thy ruling faculty worse than it was before.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.