Ben Jonson Quotes

If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.

The gifts that one receives for giving are so immeasurable that it is almost an injustice to accept them.

True charity occurs only when there are no notions of giving, giver, or gift.

Anonymously perform acts of kindness, expecting nothing in return-not even a thank you.

Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.

I enjoy helping. I like doing benefits and things like that, but don't feel the need to be thanked or even meet the people I am doing the benefit for.

You get to do things for people who will never pay you back and they say you never have had a perfect day until you've done something for someone who will never pay you back.

The best favors are worth doing for the doing, not because we'll ever get paid back appropriately.

The book-keeping of benefits is simple: it is all expenditure; if any one returns it, that is clear gain; if he does not return it, it is not lost, I gave it for the sake of giving.

The sweetest things in life were not necessarily what one strove for and grabbed. Instead, many many times the All-Merciful, the All-Generous would give His servants without being petitioned, without waiting to be asked.

Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold, but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp is of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the seasons with him from the south.

What a creature he was! Never have I felt such a horse between my knees. His great haunches gathered under him with every stride, and he shot forward ever faster and faster, stretched like a greyhound, while the windbeat in my face and whistled past my ears.

Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly. 'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.

Dear to me is my bonnie white steed; Oft has he helped me at pinch of need.

A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past service.

How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.

If you recall the happiest moments in your life, they are all from when you were doing something for somebody else.

Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?

God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for.

This time of year, I live and breathe the beach. My cheeks feel raw with the wind throwing sand against them. My thighs sting from the friction of the saddle. My arms ache from holding up two thousand pounds of horse. I have forgotten what it is like to be warm and what a full night’s sleep feels like and what my name sounds like spoken instead of shouted across yards of sand. I am so, so alive.

We may never be able to pay directly for the gifts of true friendship - but pay we must, even though we make our payment to someone who owes us nothing, in some other place and at some other time.

But when I came, alas, to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day.

The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.

Give to another human being without the expectation of a return.