Suppose our gratitude could be zero-based gratitude.
With zero-based gratitude,
we would be grateful for everything we had each day -
regardless of whether it was more or less than yesterday.
With zero-based gratitude, I can be grateful for all the people,
the love, the food, the shelter, the services,
the health, that I am blessed with today,
regardless of what I had yesterday.
With zero-based gratitude,
I can be grateful each day for the gift of life itself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
You want to do mankind a real service?
Tell funnier jokes.
- the Woody Allen movie Stardust Memories (1980)
As we work to create light for others,
we naturally light our own way.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Seek first to understand,
then to be understood.
- Stephen Covey
The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
The most important service rendered
by the press and the magazines
is that of educating people
to approach printed matter with distrust.
- Samuel Butler
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
- Mother Teresa
One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.
- Albert Einstein
My greatest service to others is living happily,
and radiating happiness and joy to those around me.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The path to your own happiness is usually found in service.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A life is not important except in
the impact it has on other lives.
- Jackie Robinson (baseball player)
Life becomes harder for us when we live for others,
but it also becomes richer and happier.
- Albert Schweitzer
To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity.
- Bodhidharma
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
The purpose of human life is to serve,
and to show compassion and the will to help others.
- Albert Schweitzer
In service, there is clarity and compassion.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
The best cure for our own self-inflicted suffering
is often service to others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If a man is proud of his wealth,
he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
- Socrates
Judgment and weariness are foes to service and generosity.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Service to others is the rent you pay
for your room here on earth.
- Muhammad Ali
What power there is in our service when our actions
line up with our mission, skills and joy.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly.
It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
- Henry Ford
I'm not on this trip as a tourist.
- Bono
No person was ever honored for what he received.
Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
- Calvin Coolidge
The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others
will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.
- Helen Keller
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
A generous heart, kind speech,
and a life of service and compassion
are the things which renew humanity.
- The Buddha
The answer to circumstances is choosing a positive response,
and the most positive choice is to be of service.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I have found out that though the ways in which
I can make myself useful are few,
yet the work open to me is endless.
- Helen Keller
A hero is someone who has given his life to
something bigger than himself
or something other than himself.
- Joseph Campbell
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice,
and is never the result of selfishness.
- Napoleon Hill
Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others,
you should put a good deal of thought
into the happiness that you are able to give.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
The miracle is not that we do this work,
but that we are happy to do it.
- Mother Teresa
Only those who have learned the power
of sincere and selfless contribution
experience life's deepest joy: true fulfillment.
- Tony Robbins
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson
For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not wait for leaders;
do it alone, person to person.
- Mother Teresa
You can have anything you want in life if you
just help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act
is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Aim above morality.
Be not simply good,
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
The brightest stars are those who
shine for the benefit of others.
- Anonymous
When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
- Abraham Lincoln
Our compassion and acts of selflessness
take us to the deeper truths.
- Amma
We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts
give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
- The Buddha
When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Life's most persistent and urgent question is,
'What are you doing for others?'
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
And so, my fellow Americans,
ask not what your country can do for you;
ask what you can do for your country.
- John F. Kennedy
You can't live a perfect day without doing something
for someone who will never be able to repay you.
- John Wooden
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
what we have done for others and the world
remains and is immortal.
- Albert Pike
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
- Albert Einstein
Happiness... consists in giving, and in serving others.
- Henry Drummond
What you leave behind is not what
is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others.
- Pericles
A worker in the rural reconstruction must have:
The body of an athlete
The attitude of a teacher
The mind of a scientist
The heart of a missionary
The spirit of a crusader.
- Jimmy Yen
If physical death is the price
that I must pay to free my brothers and sisters
from a permanent death of the spirit,
then nothing can be more redemptive.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The whole worth of a kind deed is
in the love that inspires it.
- The Talmud
No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank
What are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nurturing is not complex.
It's simply being tuned in to the thing or person before you
and offering small gestures toward what it needs at that time.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
Good works are links that form a chain of love.
- Mother Teresa
When you make a world tolerable for yourself,
you make a world tolerable for others.
- Anais Nin
We may have found a cure for most evils;
but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all,
the apathy of human beings.
- Helen Keller
I have always held firmly to the thought
that each one of us can do a little
to bring some portion of misery to an end.
- Albert Schweitzer
For it is in giving that we receive.
- St. Francis of Assisi
Humility is not thinking less of yourself,
it's thinking of yourself less.
- Rick Warren (author of The Purpose Driven(R) Life)
The more we care for the happiness of others,
the greater is our own sense of well-being.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life,
that no man can sincerely try
to help another without helping himself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.