Quotes About Human Kindness

“Sometimes, you know, human kindness just knocks you off your feet.”

— Hollis Seamon

“I do believe in the power of prayer. I do. And I believe in the power of human kindness.”

— Leland Dirks

“The milk of human kindness was kept often in the larder, and the tea served with lemon.”

— John Halperin

“I can feel the irrationality and anxiety draining my store of energy like a battery-operated racecar grinding away in the corner. This is the energy I will need to get through the next day. But I just lie in bed and watch it burn, and with it any hope for a productive tomorrow. There go the dishes, there goes the grocery store, there goes exercise, there goes bringing in the garbage cans. There goes basic human kindness.”

— Maria Semple

“He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, ...”

— Philip Kerr

“I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man's meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”

— Vasily Grossman

“Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.”

— Vasily Grossman

“Nothing carries more potential for change than individual acts of human kindness.”

— Jamie Winship

“All values in this world are more or less questionable, but the most important thing in life is human kindness.”

— Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“Overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the family had invited everyone they could think of, including people they cordially disliked.”

— Gerald Durrell

“Should we act on our unseen fears before the virtue of human kindness? Who's given us more, the Light's faith or that stranger? And if you choose to reject generosity, then what standing do we have left in this world, or in the hereafter, for that matter?”

— Janny Wurts

“I think it may be not unjustly said that Mrs. Barton Trafford fairly ran over with the milk of human kindness, but all the same I have an inkling that if ever the milk of human kindness was charged with vitriol, here was a case in point.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“Luther had passed many a white church in his day, heard them singing their hymns and chanting their "Amens" and seen them gather on a porch or two afterward with their lemonade and piety, but he knew if he ever showed up on their steps, starving or injured, the only response he'd get to a plea for human kindness would be the amen of a shotgun pointed in his face.”

— Dennis Lehane

“Seeing as when it came to the milk of human kindness
they were all pretty much lactose intolerant.”

— J.L. Merrow

“I see death and tragedy all the time and nothing makes it worse than when it's totally senseless. All she needed was some niceness, some basic human kindness, and she wouldn't be on her way to the morgue and her parents wouldn't be devastated. It's heartbreaking and so senseless.”

— Jay Crownover

“I think that if you were somehow able to measure the weight of human kindness, it would have weighed more on 9/11 than it ever had.”

— David Levithan

“God drove Cain out of his presence and sent him into exile far away from his native land, so that he passed from a life of human kindness to one which was more akin to the rude existence of a wild beast.”

— Saint Ambrose

“As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.”

— Svetlana Alliluyeva

“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness. One of the cows mooed appreciatively.”

— Kelley Armstrong

“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.”

— P.D. James

“The supply of the milk of human kindness was short by several gallons”

— P.G. Wodehouse

“In the human race, the frequency of the virtues that are identical in us all is not more wonderful than the multiplicity of the defects that are peculiar to each one of us. Undoubtedly, it is not common sense that is "the commonest thing in the world"; it is human kindness.”

— Marcel Proust

“Mom told me ... it's better to trust people than to doubt them. She said that people aren't born with kind hearts. When we're born, all we have are desires for food and material things. Selfish instincts, I guess. But she said that kindness is something that grows inside of each person's body ... but it's up to us to nurture that kindness in our hearts. That's why kindness is different for each person. Mom taught me that people's differences are something to celebrate ... When I thought of all the different shapes of human kindness
imaging them as round or square ... I got really excited. Your kindness is like a candle, Sohma-kun. I can feel it light up ... and I just want to smile. -Tohru”

— Natsuki Takaya

“As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded, they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history will vanish from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the fountain azure of the Sierra.”

— John Muir

“How Long Before Monsanto Try to Patent The Milk of Human Kindness”

— Dean Cavanagh

“Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

“Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way:”

— William Shakespeare

“I realize more and more how instinctively pessimistic I am of all human kindness
since I am always so bowled over by it
and am never surprised by injustice, malice or personal attack.”

— Dawn Powell

“Human kindness is deeply subversive to totalitarian creeds, which seek to thwart all compassion toward those deemed unworthy of moral consideration, those branded as internal or external enemies.”

— Chris Hedges

“He who distributes the milk of human kindness cannot help but spill a little on himself.”

— James M. Barrie

“I see a strategy for fracturing humanity well in play: just keep people separated and let them reinforce invented boundaries in their imaginations. Because when people come together and really listen to each other, doing the hard work of human kindness, virtually every barrier is breached.”

— Jen Hatmaker

“We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate. Being so alone a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human worth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.”

— Eva Mozes Kor

“As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.”

— Francis Fukuyama

“Love's true nature remains forever beyond the grasp of all our faculties. It is far greater than any feeling or emotion and completely surpasses any act of human kindness ... The realization of love always remains mysterious.”

— Gerald May

“I am full of the milk of human kindness, damn it. My trouble is that it gets clotted so easily.”

— Gilbert Harding

“The fact is, people who don't have any misfortunes are very irritating to their neighbours. No opportunities for popping in with condolences and new-laid eggs. No visits to the afflicted. No opportunities for the milk of human kindness to flow. Naturally it doesn't.”

— Patricia Wentworth

“Nothing is as difficult as to achieve results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerances and the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be a one-idea individual concentrated entirely on that one idea and ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.”

— Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

“In the great wealth, the great firmament of your nation's generosities this particular choice may perhaps be found by future generations as a trifle eccentric, but the mere fact of it ... the prodigal, pure, human kindness of it ... must be seen as a beautiful star in that firmament which shines upon me at this moment, dazzling me a little, but filling me with warmth of the extraordinary elation, the euphoria that happens to so many of us at the first breath of the majestic glow of a new tomorrow.”

— Laurence Olivier

“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

“When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.”

— Agnes Repplier

“No man can become a great leader of men unless he has the milk of human kindness in his own heart, and leads by suggestion and kindness, rather than by force.”

— Napoleon Hill

“The milk of human kindness should be brought fresh to the table every morning.”

— Austin O'Malley

“They're a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time - and they're phonies, all of them. And I head the list ... their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.”

— Ben Hecht

“There are people who have lost every trace of human kindness.”

— Billy Joel

“To rankling poison hast thou turned in me the milk of human kindness.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“I'm most inspired whenever I hear of even the smallest act of human kindness.”

— Byron Katie

“The stranger who receives the rare gift of human kindness holds its value in his heart forever.”

— Charles Dudley Warner

“Soul-serving requires a heart that beats hard against the ribs. It requires a soul full of the milk of human kindness. This is the sine qua non of success.”

— Charles Spurgeon

“Human kindness has no reward. You should give to others in every way you see. expect absolutely nothing from anyone. It should be your goal to love every human you encounter. All human suffering that you're aware of and continues without your effort to stop it becomes your crime.”

— Louis C.K.