William Ames Quotes

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.

It is the spread of the good things that vindicates the whole reason we live our lives in networks. If I was always violent to you or gave you germs, you would cut the ties to me and the network would disintegrate. In a deep and fundamental way, networks are connected to goodness, and goodness is required for networks to emerge and spread.

I want to be that person who could sacrifice everything for others.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

If I can't be happy, nobody can be happy.

I've always been attracted to girls whose hearts are the biggest thing about them. People can be very sweet and kind to others who can do a lot for them. I want to find a girl who will be the same person to those who can't do anything for her in return.

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

Improv requires one thing I lack that I think most mothers need - the basic instinct to put someone else first.

You need an attitude of service. You're not just serving yourself. You help others to grow up and you grow with them.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

If a person loves only one other person, and is indifferent to his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

I don't believe we're only motivated by our own self-interests. Often out of crisis comes this enormous wellspring of generosity and motivation.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.

Kindness makes a fellow feel good whether it's being done to him or by him.

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?