QUOTATIONS ON SERVICE
"Your life and mine should be valued not by what we take... but by what we give."
-- Edgar Allen
"What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good."
-- Aristotle
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
-- Edmond Burke
"Service to a just cause rewards the worker with more real happiness and satisfaction than any other venture of life."
-- Carrie Chapman Catt
"I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. We must all learn to work not just for our own self, family, or nation but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources, and through concern for future generations, the proper care of the environment."
-- The Dalai Lama
"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain."
-- Emily Dickinson
"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
-- Edward Everett
"The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you and act accordingly."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."
-- Thomas Jefferson
“Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can think of no milder term to apply to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
-- Robert F. Kennedy
“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.”
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.”
-- Robert Baden-Powell
“I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
-- Albert Schweitzer
"A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer."
-- Seneca
“So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.”
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
"I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy, I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy. "
-- Rabindranath Tagore
“The most satisfying thing in life is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others. “
-- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. “
-- Mother Teresa