Kind

“ My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. ”

“ Giddings: "Consciousness of Kind is that pleasurable state of mind which includes organic sympathy, the perception of resemblance conscious or reflective sympathy, affection and the desire for recognition." ”

“ But when the child really assimilates the lesson of the kind action, and gives its penny, knowing why it does so, and having a feeling of pity in its heart, then the action is really the action of the self. ”

“ Sixth—Cultivate every mental and bodily quality that will make you firm in goodness, strong and physically able to be useful to your kind, generous and broad-minded, self-sacrificing, and you will daily and hourly be lovely and grow into the beautiful. ”

“ You need to know, therefore, what qualities predominate in your character, and in the predominance of which your true happiness consists. If your qualities are chiefly animal, the essence of which is to eat and drink, you will day and night seek after these things. If your qualities are of the ferocious kind, the essence of which is to tear and rend, to injure and destroy, you will act accordingly. ”

“ What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,—generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. ”

“ You are cognizant of the true kind by feeling that you take it in, savour it, and have what flowers live on, natural air for food. That which you give out—the joyful roar—is not the better part; let that go to good fellowship and the benefit of the lungs. ”

“ The other children of kindred blood, asking or giving kind offices; affectionate relations and friends, who turn out the fairest side of nature and themselves to the new-born stranger, — all of these are helps in the education of the heart. ”

“ The face the index of a feeling mind,
And her whole conduct rational and kind. ”

“ You see, in the tales, how the boy who is kind to beasts, and polite, and generous, and brave, always comes best through his trials, and no doubt these tales were meant to make their hearers kind, unselfish, courteous, and courageous. ”

“ They hold up for imitation all those cardinal virtues of love and self-sacrifice,—which is the ultimate criterion of character,—of courage, loyalty, kindness, gentleness, fairness, pity, endurance, bravery, industry, perseverance, and thrift. ”

“ Kindness and warm affection, clearness of moral vision, and purity of heart, with a lively relish for quiet intellectual pleasures, for society and books adapted to refine, improve and elevate, were among the characteristics common to them all. ”

“ They may rail at this life—from the hour I began it,
I found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And, until they can show me some happier planet,
More social and bright, I'll content me with this. ”

“ O one quality of the mind and heart is more important as an element conducive to worldly success than civility—that feeling of kindness and love for our fellow-beings which is expressed in pleasing manners. Yet how many of our young men, with an affected contempt for the forms and conventionalities of life, assume to despise those delicate attentions, that exquisite tenderness of thought and manner, that mark the true gentleman. ”

“ So strangely you dazzle my eye!
But when without art
Your kind thoughts you impart,
When your love runs in blushes through every vein;
When it darts from your eyes, when it pants in your heart,
Then I know you're a woman again. ”

“ I'll play fair, and I'll prove my point,—that you see pretty much what you look for, that you get pretty nearly what you give, that common or garden kindness is mirrored in kindness, that affection fairly boomerangs back! ”

“ But perhaps the most striking quality in a character which is at once complex and clear as the light of [239] day is the ever-welling kindness and open-armed sympathy with which he shares the troubles of his fellow-men. ”

“ How many are the fair young faces and graceful, gentle forms and innocent hearts, how frequent are the kindly words in that place; and yet, alas! how small the power to see and know the beauty of the world; how few the eyes to behold the approaching of the fair daughter of the sun! ”

“ And she in heaven is placed,
Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth!
Follow those pure beams, whose beauty burneth!
That so have scorched thee
As thou still black must be,
Till her kind beams thy black so brightness turneth.
Follow her, while yet her glory shineth!
There comes a luckless night
That will dim all her light;
And this the black unhappy shade divineth.
Follow still, since so thy fates ordained!
The sun must have his shade,
Till both at once do fade,—
The sun still proud, the shadow still disdained. ”

“ The second, rendered loving-kindness, denotes a strong proneness, a ready, large, and liberal disposition, to goodness and compassion, powerfully prompting to all instances of kindness and bounty; flowing as freely as waters from a perpetual fountain. ”

“ Strong men, of rude dress and speech, whose lives were as rough as the hills in which they were reared, and whose thoughts were often as crude as their half-savage and sometimes lawless customs, came to sit at the feet of this gentle one, who received them all with such kindly interest and instinctive understanding. ”

“ It gives scope for every human virtue, since each of these is developed from the love and confidence which here predominate. It unites all which ennobles and beautifies life,—sympathy, kindness of will and deed, gratitude, devotion, and every delicate, intimate feeling. ”

“ All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. ”

“ This kindness, in a divine creator, as in an earthly parent, is a solemn duty,—a sacred obligation,—the non-performance of which were the most atrocious of crimes. When performed, love from the creature, as from the child, is a necessary consequence, and an all-sufficient reward. ”

“ What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. ”

“ The lively intelligence, the rapid conception, the arch remark, the cordial smile; which give grace to kindness, playfulness to counsel, gentleness to raillery, and softness even to reproach; these, the expressive sources of delight, and of comprehension, in social commerce, they were fain wholly to relinquish; from the hurry of unremitting diligence, and undivided attention to manual toil. ”

“ Kindness, for instance, is, let us say, the subject of instruction this week. There is one of the talks with their mother that the children love—a short talk is best—about kindness. Kindness is love, showing itself in act and word, look and manner. ”

“ He also remarked that the way to broaden the outlook of the very narrow-hearted and prejudiced, and to make them listen to a wider teaching, was by showing towards them the greatest kindness and love. The example of our lives was of more value than words. ”

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

“ The reader will rejoice no less, and from higher than personal motives. He will see in this kindness another proof of your hearty interest in that class which, if rightly considered, is, from its very poverty, a blessing to the land, by putting our indolence and selfishness to shame. ”

“ O sinless one, why art thou, in thy kindness, tampering with the principle of my conduct in life? I am compassionate, and devoutly intent on virtue, and steadfast in conduct. Kindliness of feeling is the great test of virtue amongst the good, and this same compassionate and humane feeling is the source of perennial felicity to the virtuous. ”

“ If we ourselves seek to maintain beauty, order, and kindliness in the conduct of the table, our children acquire a love of all that makes for beauty172 and order and kindliness, for righteousness in the little things of life. ”

“ Reliable as rocks, judicious in every action, dependable in trifles as well as the large affairs of life, full of mercy and kindness to others, affectionate and well-loved in their homes, their lives are pure and kindly. ”

“ Their upright walk, their possession of hands, their articulate voices, their superior minds, their powers of self-protection—and the adaptation of these powers and qualities to one another, constituting an altogether higher existence—all these show a special kindness in a wise Creator who has all the qualities and powers in a far higher degree. ”

“ It is also a fact that a given mental state in one person tends to excite a like state in those with whom he associates. How important, then, that each and all cultivate, as habits, the qualities of cheerfulness, kindness, and good-will, instead of the opposite states of mind. ”

“ Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.
That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. ”

“ All the good that God meant for mankind, "all the joys of sense, all the pleasures of reason, lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence." ”

“ If you set out to do a good deed, you may do a hundred small kindnesses on the way. ”

“ "No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of the child. ”

“ Benevolence, charitableness, tolerance, sympathy with those about him in their joys and their sorrows, kindly readiness to serve others when he could, utter absence of envy or real ill-will,—these are qualities that shine out everywhere in his life and in the succession of his writings, and that receive, though they hardly need, additional and more intimate illustration in his Journal. ”

“ We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice [Pg 167] or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique. ”

“ I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. ”

“ Incline us oh God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves. ”

“ If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, of joys, of base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own, which he thinks so peculiarly isolated from the web of life, how much kinder, how much gentler he would be! ”

“ Its failure to reach me will, I fear, deprive me of that pleasure, and I must ask the favour of you to thank them most heartily for their kindness in providing me with a book in comparison with which all others in my eyes are of minor importance, and which in all my perplexities has never failed to give me light and strength. ”

“ Have you, as a member of the human race, any feeling that you share in the advancement of its gentleness, of its sense of beauty and justice—that, in proportion as the human race becomes more lovable and lovely, you too become more lovable and lovely? ”

“ The virtues and excellences of her character, her blameless life, her sensibility, the warmth of her affections, her sincerity and candor, call forth a flow of feeling that cannot be restrained. To an almost child-like simplicity, and singleness of heart, she united a clear and just conception [Pg 107] of character; to a deep and affecting humility, a dignity and elevation of thought, that commanded the respect and veneration of those around her. Amidst many infirmities she retained the freshness and enthusiasm of youth. Society never lost its charms. ”