J. M. Coetzee Quotes

When you're doing a job that benefits other people, it's easy to assume that they feel conscious of the fact that you're doing this work - that they should feel grateful, and that they should and do feel guilty about not helping you.

We help other people because we can, or because it makes us feel good, not because we're counting on some future payback. There is a word for this; love.

To be kind is good. To be kind without expecting anything in return is better.

It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.

There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

This will wreck you! Today, treat everyone you meet as if they're going to be dead by midnight. extend all the kindness and understanding you can, and do it with no thought of any reward.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.

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.

I just feel that I'm compelled; that I have a responsibility to give back to those less fortunate.

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Helping others isn't a chore; it is one of the greatest gifts there is.

I think there is something for all of us where you find a balance in your life, where you feel that everything you do isn't about your own creature comforts or satisfying your own appetites. Some of it has to be directed outward and there is a huge satisfaction in that.

When you think in terms of public service, I heard so much about what Mother Theresa had done in her life. And I was fortunate enough to get a chance to meet her and talk to her a lot about what motivates her and what drives her. And that, to me, is a person that really is an extraordinary role model.

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?'

Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.

Sometimes people don't trust the force of kindness. They think love or compassion or kindness will make you weak and kind of stupid and people will take advantage of you; you won't stand up for other people.

I'm just a regular mother who's trying to save lives and be the best human being I can be.

One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.

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.

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.

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