#nero

People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one s promises reducing a partner s worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#generosity #loyalty #trustworthiness #nature

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53) (Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.) ↗

— Huston Smith

#generosity #gift #giving #non-attachment #practice

Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous. ↗

— Bill Bradley

#generous #leaders #modest #should

With gentleness, Overcome anger. With generosity, Overcome meanness. With truth, Overcome delusion. ↗

— The Dhammapada

#delusion #generosity #truth #anger

Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds. ↗

— George Mason

#extinguished #generous #human #human nature #infancy

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#dignity #enough #frank #generous #independent

There's a certain feeling of giving, a certain feeling of generosity in love songs. When you sing a song of love, you're actually giving something to yourself, too. You're singing and casting these affirmations of love out into the universe. ↗

— Jason Mraz

#casting #certain #certain feeling #feeling #generosity

I had been offered fellowships to enter as a graduate student at either Harvard or Princeton. But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition... Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location. ↗

— John Forbes Nash, Jr.

#became #been #choice #competition #either

If Copenhagen were a person, that person would be generous, beautiful, elderly, but with a flair. A human being that has certain propensities for quarrelling, filled with imagination and with appetite for the new and with respect for the old - somebody who takes good care of things and of people. ↗

— Connie Nielsen

#beautiful #being #care #certain #copenhagen

When rough times have fallen upon our state in the past, Texans have always responded with generosity and an eagerness to help. The compassionate response to the fires has proven that this community spirit is alive and well. ↗

— Randy Neugebauer

#always #community #compassionate #eagerness #fallen