K is for KINDNESS

Everyone, to those weaker than themselves, is kind.

- Aeschylus



No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

- Aesop



Both man and womankind belie their nature
When they are not kind.

- Philip James Bailey, Festus (sc. Home)



Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life
But needs it and may learn.

- Philip James Bailey, Festus (sc. Home)



Kindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward really wicked people for the evil they refrain from committing.

- Honore de Balzac



Always try to be a little kinder than necessary.

- Sir James Matthew Barrie



We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness around us at so little expense. Some of them will inevitably fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others: and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring.

- Jeremy Bentham



Paradise is open to all kind hearts.

- Pierre Jean de Beranger



Kindness is a language the dumb can speak and the deaf can hear and understand.

- Christian Nestell Bovee



Gentle feelings produce profoundly beneficial effects upon stern natures. It is the spring rain which melts the ice-covering of the earth, and causes it to open to the beams of heaven.

- Fredrika Bremer



Have you had a kindness shown?
Pass it on;
'Twas not given for thee alone,
Pass it on;
Let it travel down the years,
Let it wipe another's tears,
'Till in Heaven the deed appears--
Pass it on.

- Rev. Henry Burton, Pass It On



Heaven in sunshine will requite the kind.

- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)



Act with kindness, but do not expect gratitude.

- Confucius



The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

- Clarence Darrow



Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort.

- Sir Humphrey Davy



He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred on him, and to talk of it, is little different from reproach.

- Demosthenes



How wise must one be to be always kind.

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach



Kindness which is not inexhaustible does not deserve the name.

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach



There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution.

- Kahlil Gibran



Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.

- Sir Arthur Helps



Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away.

- Sir Arthur Helps



One kindly deed may turn
The fountain of thy soul
To love's sweet day-star, that shall o'er thee burn
Long as its currents roll.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.



And Heaven, that every virtue bears in mind,
E'en to the ashes of the just is kind.

- Homer ("Smyrns of Chios"), The Iliad



A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.

- Washington Irving



How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!

- Washington Irving



He was so benevolent, so merciful a man that, in his mistaken passion, he would have held an umbrella over a duck in a shower of rain.

- Douglas William Jerrold



A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

- Joseph Joubert



There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words.

- Walter Savage Landor



One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality.

- David Herbert Lawrence



Though he was rough, he was kindly.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,



The greater the kindred is, the lesse the kindnesse must bee.

- John Lyly (Lylie or Lyllie]



There's no dearth of kindness
In the world of ours;
Only in our blindness
We gather thorns for flowers.


- Gerald Massey, There's no Dearth of Kindness



A small unkindness is a great offence.

- Hannah More



Kind words produce their own image in men's souls, and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.

- Blaise Pascal



Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

- Theodore Isaac Rubin



In the intercourse of social life, it is by little acts of watchful kindness recurring daily and hourly,--and opportunities of doing kindnesses if sought for are forever starting up,--it is by words, by tones, by gestures, by looks, that affection is won and preserved. He who neglects these trifles yet boasts that, whenever a great sacrifice is called for, he shall be ready to make it, will rarely be loved. The likelihood is, he will not make it; and if he does, it will be much rather for his own sake than for his neighbor's.

- George Augustus Henry Sala



Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for a kindness.
[Lat., Unicumque homo est, ibi beneficio locus est.]

- Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca),



Kindness, in women, not their beauteous looks,
Shall win my love.

- William Shakespeare



Kindness gives birth to kindness.

- Sophocles



Everyone of us knows how painful it is to be called by malicious names, to have his character undermined by false insinuations, to be overreached in a bargain, to be neglected by those who rise in life, to be thrust on one side by those who have stronger wills and stouter hearts. Everyone knows, also, the pleasure of receiving a kind look, a warm greeting, a hand held out to help in distress, a difficulty solved, a higher hope revealed for this world or the next. By that pain and by that pleasure let us judge what we should do to others.

- Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley




The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.

- Laurence Sterne



If what must be given is given willingly the kindness is doubled.
[Lat., Bis gratum est, quod dato opus est, ultro si offeras.]

- Syrus (Publilius Syrus), Maxims



I have sped by land and sea, and mingled with much people, but never yet could find a spot unsunned by human kindness.

- Martin Farquhar Tupper



One can always be kind to people one cares nothing about.

- Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde)



On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

- William Wordsworth