When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.

It’s good to keep this in mind. 

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.80, Book 6, #48. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

unfortunate that this has happened

-It’s unfortunate that this has happened.

No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it – not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn’t violate human nature? Or do you think something that’s not against nature’s will can violate it? But you know what its will is. Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself?

So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.48, Book 4, #49. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

extraordinarily giving people

Americans are, by any reasonable measure, extraordinarily giving people. We have given trillions upon trillions of dollars of our nation's wealth to the world's poorer people. And not always with strategic military or economic goals attached. Here at home, we provide government assistance to flood victims. Americans beset by fire damage, tornadoes and hurricanes. You can smoke all of your life and walk into a government-funded hospital and ask your fellow Americans to save your life. You can make the poorest nutritional choices known to mankind and get diabetes medication paid for by the government. You can go hiking in some crazy-ass, remote part of some national park and certain, caring fellow Americans will attempt to find you. People pay a lot of money in taxes here in America, but still find ways to give billions privately every year to help fight disease, care for the elderly, teach painting and dance, conserve precious open spaces, give scholarships on behalf of their alma mater, or send Girl Scout cookies to the troops. 

Alec Baldwin, "It's Time to Suck It Up and Pay Our Bill." Huffington Post. Posted: 7/29/11 08:09 PM ET

generosity and spirit of welcome

New Orleans is characterized above all by its generosity and its spirit of welcome.


Tom Piazza, Why New Orleans Matters. Regan Books. 2005. p. 52

the way to find witches

"I heard that you Navajo say the way to find witches, anybody evil, is to look for people who have more than they need and their kinfolks are hungry."


Tony Hillerman, The Shape Shifter. 2006. p.191

I would be even more generous

I always considered myself as a bishop who erred on the side of generosity, and if I had to do it again, I would be even more generous.


Thomas S. Monson, Pure Religion: The Story of Church Welfare Since 1930 by Glen L. Rudd. 1995. P.314. Remarks originally given in a talk to Quorums of the Seventy, August 1991, as told to Glenn L. Rudd

A man is sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.


Benjamin Franklin - (1706-90), U.S. statesman, scientist, inventor and writer. Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin, edited by Russel B. Nye. 1949. p.22

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

Emma Goldman (1869-1940, American anarchist)