Miriam Margolyes Quotes

The major forces in human nature: self interest and caring for others

You need to have a heart to help others and separate yourself from your money.

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness .

It is easy to be lenient at other people's expense, and call it generosity of mind.

My father (Danny Thomas) used to tell me there are two kinds of people, the takers and the givers. 'The takers sometimes eat better,' he would say, 'but the givers always sleep better.'

The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet.

For over 35 years, I've been making charitable donations anonymously.

The UK public have repeatedly shown enormous generosity to those in need.

Obviously, people in Texas have big hearts.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

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

Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else.

Compassion is contempt with a human face.

Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous.

I think Americans have big hearts.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

I just feel like I have when I started making a lot of money, I started spreading it out to people. Mickelson, the whole deal, the over-tip: if I see a guy that looks like he needs a hand out or something, I'll pull something out and give him something.

We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.

I have always believed helping your fellow man is profitable in every sense, personally and bottom line.

There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.

They talked about me as if I were Mother Teresa, and that every time I get a paycheck I go and send it to poor people and that we spend every free moment helping out people less fortunate. That was an enormous exaggeration.

To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.

If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.

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