Small Random Acts of Kindness

Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.
---Mother Teresa

The best portion of a good man's life are his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
---William Wordsworth

 

The Star Thrower (by Loren Eiseley)

One day, a man was walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw a young person reaching down to the sand, picking up something and very gently throwing it back into the sea. As he got closer, he called out, “Good morning! What are you doing?”

The young person paused, looked up and replied, “Throwing starfish into the sea.”

“Why are you throwing starfish into the sea?” he asked.

“The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in they’ll die.”

“But, don’t you realize that there are miles of beach here and starfish all along it. You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The young person listened politely. Then knelt down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said, “Made a difference to this one.”

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Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.
---Henri Frederick Amiel

Kindness makes the difference between passion and caring. Kindness is tenderness, kindness is love, perhaps greater than love .... kindness is goodwill, kindness says "I want you to be happy." Kindness comes very close to the benevolence of God.
---Randolph Ray

Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.
---Seneca

No act of kindness is wasted.
---William Purkey

Start some kind word on its travels. There is no telling where the good it may do will stop.
---Sir Wilfred Grenfell

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
---George Sand

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?---James Matthew Barrie

What wisdom can one find that is greater than kindness?
---Jean Jacques Rousseau

The beginning and end of Torah is performing acts of kindness.... The highest wisdom is loving kindness.
---The Talmud

If you cannot lift the load off another's back, do not walk away. Try to lighten it.
---Frank Tyger

Little kindnesses ... will broaden your heart, and slowly you will habituate yourself to helping your fellow man in many ways.---Zadik Kindness is language which the dumb can speak, and the deaf can understand.
---C.N. Bovee

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
---The Dalai Lama

... the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.
---Leo Tolstoy

Forget injuries, never forget kindness.
---Confucius

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
---Theodore Isaac Rubin

True kindness presupposed the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joy of others.
---Andre Gide

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.
---Saint Augustine