Thoughts of Famous Charity Quotes in English

Charity quotes in English serve as powerful reminders of the deep-rooted values of generosity, altruism, and compassion that are essential for nurturing a more humane society. These succinct yet profound phrases encapsulate the essence of what it means to give back, inspiring individuals from all walks of life to engage in acts of kindness and contribute positively to the welfare of others. For instance, the adage "Charity begins at home" underscores the crucial idea that before one can extend support to those in need on a global scale, it is imperative to foster a culture of care and assistance within one's local community. This perspective advocates for prioritizing local needs and helping those who are immediately around us, thereby creating a solid foundation of empathy that can ripple outward.

Here’s a collection of famous charity quotes along with their meanings and examples. These quotes emphasize the value of giving, compassion, and the impact of helping others.


1. "No one has ever become poor by giving." – Anne Frank

Meaning: Giving to others does not impoverish a person; in fact, it enriches them emotionally and spiritually. The act of helping others brings fulfillment and joy that can't be measured by material wealth.

Example: A successful business owner donates part of their income to a local shelter, finding more satisfaction in the act of giving than any material reward, and realizes that their finances remain strong despite regular contributions.


2. "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." – Mahatma Gandhi

Meaning: Serving others can reveal your purpose and strengths. When you focus on helping others, you often discover aspects of yourself that were previously hidden.

Example: A college student unsure of their career path volunteers at a community center and finds fulfillment in working with children, realizing that teaching or social work could be a meaningful career.


3. "Charity begins at home, but should not end there." – Thomas Fuller

Meaning: It's essential to care for and support those close to you first. However, the circle of compassion should extend beyond one's immediate family to others in need.

Example: After ensuring their family is secure, a person decides to contribute to community programs and global initiatives, knowing that they can help both their loved ones and the broader community.


4. "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." – Winston Churchill

Meaning: Earning money sustains us, but true meaning and fulfillment come from giving to others. Helping others creates a lasting impact and enriches our lives.

Example: A professional chooses to donate a portion of their earnings and volunteer in local projects, realizing that their acts of charity bring deeper happiness than career accomplishments alone.


5. "It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving." – Mother Teresa

Meaning: The size of a gift doesn’t matter as much as the intent and care behind it. Even small acts of charity done with compassion can make a big difference.

Example: A person with limited resources donates what they can to a friend in need. The friend values the support not for the amount but for the warmth and love it was given with.


6. "If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else." – Chinese Proverb

Meaning: True happiness comes from helping others. Acts of generosity lead to a deep, lasting sense of joy, unlike fleeting pleasures.

Example: A retired person volunteers at a local hospital, finding purpose and lifelong happiness through the friendships and gratitude they receive from those they help.


7. "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." – Helen Keller

Meaning: Working with others can amplify the impact of charity. When people come together for a cause, they can accomplish much more than any individual effort alone.

Example: A group of neighbors collaborates to organize a fundraiser for disaster relief, realizing that their combined efforts raised much more than any one of them could have raised alone.


8. "The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer." – Mahatma Gandhi

Meaning: Taking action to help others is more impactful than simply hoping for change. Practical help is more beneficial than passive intentions.

Example: A person notices a hungry child and offers them a meal instead of merely feeling sympathy, making a real difference in the child’s life.


9. "Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more." – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Meaning: Fulfillment comes not from receiving but from giving to others. True happiness lies in generosity rather than in accumulating wealth.

Example: A successful entrepreneur who donates a portion of their earnings to build schools in underserved areas feels more satisfaction from this act than from personal financial gains.


10. "You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." – John Bunyan

Meaning: The purest form of charity is giving without expecting anything in return. Helping those who can’t repay shows true compassion and selflessness.

Example: A person anonymously pays for a struggling single mother's groceries. The act is entirely altruistic, as the giver expects nothing in return, experiencing a deeper sense of fulfillment.


These charity quotes emphasize the profound effect of kindness and compassion, showing that giving to others doesn’t just help the recipient—it also enriches the giver’s life. Whether through small acts of kindness or larger charitable efforts, each act of giving creates ripples of positive change.

Additionally, quotes such as "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted" serve to remind us that every single contribution, regardless of its size, plays a significant role in making a difference. This principle reinforces the notion that even the simplest gestures of goodwill can have far-reaching effects, motivating individuals to recognize the value of their actions and the cumulative impact they can have when combined with the efforts of others. Such expressions not only encourage participation in charitable endeavors but also emphasize the importance of compassion as a driving force in societal change.

By sharing these impactful quotes, individuals can cultivate a culture of giving, inspiring their peers and communities to embrace philanthropy as a core value. The dissemination of these messages can spark conversations about social responsibility and collective action, encouraging more people to join the movement towards a more generous and supportive world. Ultimately, charity quotes serve not only as inspiration but also as catalysts for a broader engagement in philanthropy, fostering an environment where kindness and generosity are celebrated and practiced.

Thought of the day Charity

He who wished to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.

- Confucius Thoughts

At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by “I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.

- Mother Teresa

We can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the Earth’s people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. This is entirely doable.

- Lester Brown

The idea that private money can solve our problems is very dangerous. Ultimately that's charity. Charity is a lovely thing. I'll never turn it down. But charity is not a substitute for systematic justice and equality.

- Jonathan Kozol

Wealth is not new. Neither is charity. But the idea of using private wealth imaginatively, constructively, and systematically to attack the fundamental problems of mankind is new.

- John Gardner

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we’d want to get involved.

- Bill Gates

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.

- John Quincy Adams

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness;  to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, you heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.

Francis Maitland Balfour

The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.

- Gordon B. Hinckley

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

- Elizabeth Gilbert

Charity Quotes List and Sayings in English

Sometimes give your services for nothing.

- Hippocrates

Sometimes give your services for nothing.

- Hippocrates

Part of being a person is about helping others.

- Regis Murayi

Part of being a person is about helping others.

- Regis Murayi Quotation

Where charity keeps pace with gain, industry is blessed.

- William Penn

Where charity keeps pace with gain, industry is blessed.

- A Quotation From William Penn

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity. 

- Charity Quotes by Albert Camus

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

- by Albert Camus

No one has ever become poor by giving.

- Anne Frank

No one has ever become poor by giving.

- Charity Quotes in English by Anne Frank

Every charitable act is a stepping stone towards heaven.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Every charitable act is a stepping stone towards heaven.

- Henry Ward Beecher

To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.

- Abraham Lincoln

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

- Saint Augustine

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

- Horace Mann

No one has ever become poor by giving.

- Anne Frank

A benefactor is a representative of God.

- Benjamin Whichcote

To give requires good sense.

- Ovid

It takes a village to raise a child.

- African Proverb

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

- Albert Einstein

Caring has the gift of making the ordinary special.

- George R. Bach

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

- Horace Mann

As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.

- Victor Hugo

Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.

- Martin Luther King, Jr

It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.

- Mother Theresa

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

- Winston Churchill

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

- Maya Angelou

Nature does not give to those who will not spend…

- R.J. Baughan

That charity which longs to publish itself ceases to be charity.

- Eliza Cook

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

- Samuel Johnson

Charity looks at the need and not at the cause.

- German Proverb

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

- Mohammed Ali

A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.

- Proverb

Charity: a thing that begins at home, and usually stays there.

- Elbert Hubbard

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

- Pablo Picasso

Be the change you want to see in the world.

- Mahatma Gandhi

I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.

- Maya Angelou

Charity is one of those remarkable words that helps to identify the fault lines of a culture.

- Janet Poppendieck

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

- Abraham Lincoln

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Not he who has much is rich but he who gives much.

- Erich Fromm

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

- Charles Caleb Colton

Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there.

- Phillips Brooks

I despise charity. It gives crumbs to a few and silences the others.

- Eve Ensler

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.

- Maya Angelou

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

- Charles Dickens

Charity Quotation in English

Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left.

- Fulton J. Sheen

We are oblivious to suffering. We are cheap with charity if it's not close to our home.

- Bill Maher

A community is like a ship, everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

- Henrik Ibsen

There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.

- John Holmes

Helping others carries its own rewards, the first of which is a return to humanity.

- Richard Paul Evans

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

- Winston Churchill

Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

- Sarah Bernhardt

He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.

- Confucius

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

- George Eliot

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

- Winston Churchill

Charity you can give even when you haven't got.

- Bernard Malamud

Not just charity, even corruption begins at home.

- K. Hari Kumar

Life doesn't offers charity, it offers chance.

- Amit Kalantri

Charity is merely returning what we have stolen.

- Shane Claiborne

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

- Aesop

Children have but little charity for each other's defects.

- Mark Twain

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

- Maya Angelou

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

- Robert South

Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life.
It’s important to the person who serves as well as the recipient.
It’s the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.
- Dorothy Height

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

- Kahlil Gibran

Capability can handle challenges, it doesn't accept charity.

- Amit Kalantri

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

- John D. Rockefeller

An act of charity by the citizens questions the worthiness of the government.

- Amit Kalantri

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than to watch it accumulate.

- Gloria Steinem

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.

- Pearl S. Buck

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

- Mohammed Ali

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

- William James

The greatest gift you can ever give is yourself.

- Michel Templet

The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace

- Mother Teresa

In every human act of charity, something larger, greater, divine has come down to visit the act.

- Geoffrey Wood

Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving people what they need to get.

- Terry Pratchett

Little deeds that proceed from charity please God and have their place among meritorious acts.

- St. Francis de Sales

God does watch over us and does notice us, but it is usually through someone else that he meets our needs.

- Spencer W. Kimball

He who wished to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.

- Confucius *

The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

- Mahatma Gandhi

You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.

- John Bunyan

When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it’s time to turn out the lights.

- George Burns

One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. Andrew Carnegie

One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.

- Andrew Carnegie Download or Share

Charity sees the need not the cause.

- German Proverb

Charity sees the need not the cause.

- German Proverb Download or Share

In charity there is no excess.

- Sir Francis Bacon Quotes

In charity there is no excess.

- Sir Francis Bacon Download or Share

Charity sees the need, not the cause.

- Proverb

Charity sees the need, not the cause.

- Proverb Download or Share

Charity begins at home.

- Terence Quotes

Charity begins at home.

- Terence Download or Share

We only have what we give.

- Isabel Allende Download or Share

Getters don’t get - givers get.

- Eugene Benge Download or Share

Give, but give until it hurts.

- Mother Teresa Download or Share

The living need charity more than the dead.

- George Arnold Download or Share

Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous.

- Sir Thomas Browne Download or Share

Charity Quotes List

We can never get a re-creation of community and heal our society without giving our citizens a sense of belonging.

- Patch Adams

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Be wary of people who go out of their way in charity. They're usually compensating for some evil they're trying to erase.

- Christopher Herz

The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity, but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least deserve it.

- William Law

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

- Gwendolyn Brooks

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.

- Buddha

Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service.

- Mother Teresa

A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool.

- Henry Fielding

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it.

- William Arthur Ward

Cultivate a passion for truth.
Pursue a life of charity.
Enjoy the beauty found in every day.

- Lisa Shea

If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

- Warren Buffett

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

- Mother Teresa

Service is about taking responsibility for what is wrong in the community, and more so, the world and doing something about it.

- Amanda Troillet

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

- Shannon L. Alder

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

- Martin Luther King

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.

- Shannon Alder

The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live.

- Ethel Percy Andrus

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

- Dom Helder Camara

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

- Jack London

The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds, ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.

- William Hutton

If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.

- Buddha

Community service puts me out of myself and lets me see a different part of myself, which is important to me.

- Alwyn Loh

I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.

- Rosa Parks

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

- Andrew Carnegieo

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

- Jane Addams

There is a natural law, a Divine law, that obliges you and me to relieve the suffering, the distressed and the destitute.

- Conrad Hilton

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

- Chinua Achebe

Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.

- Terry Goodkind

When wealth is centralized, the people are dispersed. When wealth is distributed, the people are brought together.

- Confucius Thoughts

Community service is one way of putting your mark on the world and experiencing diversity to enhance your mind and spirit.

- Caitlin Chicoine

I try not to speak about all the charities and people I help, because I believe we can only be truly generous when we expect nothing in return.

- Muhammad Ali

Community service is important to me for so many reasons! First and foremost, I take pride in knowing that I am helping to positively affect someone’s life.

- Gillian Rappaport

The purpose of any charity is simply to turn people's mirrors into windows. An outward view of the world's needs are vast in comparison to an inward one.

- Shannon L. Alder

The greatest work you will ever do is charity; the most divine work you will ever do will be changing people’s perception of God, while you’re doing charity.

- Shannon L. Alder

Charity is appeased when some rich person gives money to the poor while justice asks why one person can be that rich when so many are poor.

- Ronald Rolheiser

Imagine for a moment that life has given you everything you dream about, but you won’t be happy, because happiness comes when you pursue your dreams, otherwise it is not your dream, but charity.

- M.F. Moonzajer

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Community service gives me a valuable opportunity to walk into a different community that is less familiar to me but just as colorful and most importantly, in need.

- Caroline Landry

We are not put on this earth for ourselves, but are placed here for each other. If you are there always for others, then in time of need, someone will be there for you.

- Jeff Warner

I will continue to distribute blankets, sleeping bags, warm clothing and food on a regular basis, in the hope that my modest efforts will give some comfort to those people we are able to help.

- Mohamed Al-Fayed