Kindness can make a true difference. Especially in this day and age, treating others with respect, compassion, and dignity is of great importance. By treating those around you kindly, you can make a profound but significant impact in their lives. In fact, the way you treat others ultimately shapes the world you live in. If you are respectful and kind to others, it is very likely that you will attract similarly minded individuals into your life. Even more so, if you are habitually kind to others, most will automatically open up to you and treat you equally good. To celebrate the importance of respectful behavior and kindness, we’ve created a collection of beautiful kindness quotes that inspire you to make a difference in the world. Enjoy the following quotes about kindness.
Kindness is not only a central element to life but it can also influence your own well-being. This is because being kind to others can boost your own happiness as well, as scientific research has highlighted. Aside from that, by treating others harmoniously, you can become an inspiration to others to do likewise.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
Plato
At the same time, kindness can help you to build bridges to those who may not be reached simply by mirroring their disrespectful behavior. As such, kindness can prove to be an effective tool to get these individuals out of their negative patterns. It can also broaden their perspective, which in turn helps them to overcome the factors which presently limit their kindness.
Enjoy the following list of inspiring kindness quotes.
In the end, when you treat others kindly and with respect, you can create for yourself a happier and more fulfilling life. And in the best case scenario, it also allows you to foster kindness in others as well.
Let’s have a look at the fantastic quotes about kindness.
150 Kindness Quotes Coming from the Heart
What is wonderful about the following kindness quotes is that they stem from some of the kindest and most loving individuals that have ever walked on this planet. For this reason, the following quotes about kindness are filled with inspiring wisdom about living a compassionate and kind life. Even more so, by reading these kindness quotes, you will quickly develop a good understanding of what you can do to share your happiness and kindness with the world.
Here are the most powerful kindness quotes.
1.
“More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.”
Roy T. Bennett
2.
“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.”
Steve Maraboli
3.
“Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who’d be kind to me. That’s what people really want if they’re telling the truth.”
Doris Lessing
4.
“When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be.”
Thomas S. Monson
5.
“They weren’t nice words he said. He could’ve lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.”
Shannon Hale
6.
“Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer
7.
“I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.”
Mother Teresa
8.
“The shortest distance between two people is a smile.”
Victor Borge
9.
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”
Albert Camus,
10.
“Search for contentment in each person you meet.”
Steve Maraboli
11.
“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
Hanya Yanagihara
12.
“Be kind. Always if you have a choice, be kind.”
Anne Rice
13.
“If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology.”
Karen Armstrong
14.
“[I]f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.”
J.M. Coetzee
15.
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.”
Kahlil Gibran
16.
“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”
John Holmes
17.
“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
18.
“Give freely to the world these gifts of love and compassion. Do not concern yourself with how much you receive in return, just know in your heart it will be returned.”
Steve Maraboli
19.
“Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family.”
Mother Teresa
20.
“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
Milan Kundera
21.
“You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”
Anne Lamott
22.
“Compassion is like mother giving love to her children. Mother’s ways are higher than others, even when everyone rejects, mother accepts with her arms open and wide.”
Amit Ray
23.
“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
Maya Angelou
24.
“Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.”
Kevin Smith
25.
“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
John Joseph Powell
26.
“Kindness is not a business. True kindness expects nothing in return and should never act with conditions.”
Roy T. Bennett
27.
“Always have a willing hand to help someone, you might be the only one that does.”
Roy T. Bennett
28.
“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”
Shannon L. Alder
29.
“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”
Pearl S. Buck
30.
“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
31.
“Be kind to one another.”
Ellen DeGeneres
32.
“Every single time you help somebody stand up you are helping humanity rise.”
Steve Maraboli
33.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
Wendy Mass
34.
“Our kindness may be the most persuasive argument for that which we believe.”
Gordon B. Hinckley
35.
“I don’t care if you’re black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Simple as that.”
Robert Michaels
36.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Albert Einstein
37.
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
Desmond Tutu
38.
“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.”
Dalai Lama XIV
39.
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
Nelson Mandela
40.
“How would your life be different if… You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day… You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.”
Steve Maraboli
41.
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
42.
“I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”
Mahatma Gandhi
43.
“Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.”
R.J. Palacio
44.
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
45.
“A random act of kindness, no matter how small, can make a tremendous impact on someone else’s life.”
Roy T. Bennett
46.
“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Anne Frank
47.
“One love, one heart, one destiny.”
Bob Marley
48.
“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole, but true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.”
Audrey Hepburn
49.
“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
50.
“No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Anne Frank
51.
“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”
George Sand
52.
“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”
Kahlil Gibran
53.
“Be a little kinder than you have to.”
E. Lockhart
54.
“Life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble, courage in your own.”
Adam Lindsay Gordon
55.
“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.”
Neil Gaiman
56.
“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
Tahereh Mafi
57.
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
Dalai Lama XIV
58.
“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”
Roy T. Bennett
59.
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
John Green
60.
“All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”
Kathryn Stockett
61.
“We are all different. Don’t judge, understand instead.”
Roy T. Bennett
62.
“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind.”
Henry James
63.
“Help others without any reason and give without the expectation of receiving anything in return.”
Roy T. Bennett
64.
“But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword.”
Rick Riordan
65.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aesop
66.
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
Mark Twain
67.
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
68.
“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”
J.K. Rowling
69.
“But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one’s deepest as well as one’s most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person – having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
70.
“Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.”
Roy T. Bennett
71.
“I like living in my head because in there, everyone is kind and innocent. Once you start integrating yourself into the world, you realize that people are nasty, mean creatures. They’re worse than zombies. People try to crush your soul and destroy your happiness, but zombies just want to have a little nibble of your brain.”
J. Cornell Michel
72.
“He is as full of valor as of kindness. Princely in both.”
William Shakespeare
73.
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from 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 which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Robert F. Kennedy
74.
“Never question the power of one! Throughout history, it has been the actions of only one person who has in inspired the movement of change.”
Steve Maraboli
75.
“Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.”
Roy T. Bennett
76.
“A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone and yet its powers can vanquish kingdoms.”
Og Mandino
77.
“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.”
Shannon L. Alder
78.
“Nothing,’ wrote Tolstoy, ‘can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
Gretchen Rubin
79.
“Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth.”
Gautama Buddha
80.
“Remember! It is Christianity to do good always – even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace.”
Charles Dickens
81.
“Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings.”
Asa Don Brown
82.
“He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.”
Dante Alighieri
83.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aesop
84.
“Practice kindness – particularly when you feel irritated or things are not going well. Kindness hardly ever goes wrong.”
Lewis Richmond
85.
“Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”
William Makepeace Thackeray
86.
“We are all different. Don’t judge, understand instead.”
Roy T. Bennett
87.
“If a person seems wicked, do not cast him away. Awaken him with your words, elevate him with your deeds, repay his injury with your kindness. Do not cast him away; cast away his wickedness.”
Lao Tzu
88.
“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”
Andy Rooney
89.
“May all that have life be delivered from suffering”
Gautama Buddha
90.
“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”
Sam Levenson
91.
“The various features and aspects of human life, such as longevity, good health, success, happiness, and so forth, which we consider desirable, are all dependent on kindness and a good heart.”
Dalai Lama XIV
92.
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is, at last, a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness, there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.”
James Boswell
93.
“It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,”
Amit Ray
94.
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd
95.
“How would your life be different if… You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day… You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.”
Steve Maraboli
96.
“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
Helen Keller
97.
“One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run.”
Mike Norton
98.
“If he can’t handle you at your worst then he does not deserve you at your best. Real love means seeing beyond the words spoken out of pain, and instead seeing a person’s soul.”
Shannon L. Alder
99.
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
100.
“It is only with true love and compassion that we can begin to mend what is broken in the world. It is these two blessed things that can begin to heal all broken hearts.”
Steve Maraboli
101.
“Because I haven’t yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.”
Caitlin Moran
102.
“It’s important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.”
Roy T. Bennett
103.
“Arrogance is someone claiming to have come to Christ, but they won’t spend more than five minutes listening to your journey because they are more concerned about their own well-being, rather than being a true disciple of Christ. Blessed is the person that takes the time to heal and hear another person so they can move on.”
Shannon L. Alder
104.
“What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.”
Barbara Kingsolver
105.
“It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.”
Jonathan Safran Foer
106.
“If you are driven by fear, anger or pride nature will force you to compete. If you are guided by courage, awareness, tranquility and peace nature will serve you.”
Amit Ray
107.
“We all are so deeply interconnected; we have no option but to love all. Be kind and do good for anyone and that will be reflected. The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the Universe.”
Amit Ray
108.
“Be mindful. Be grateful. Be positive. Be true. Be kind.”
Roy T. Bennett
109.
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
Lao Tzu
110.
“There is nothing so rewarding as to make people realize that they are worthwhile in this world.”
Bob Anderson
111.
“I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends – the fear, the terror, the pain – and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being.”
Rai Aren
112.
“If you have kindness in your heart, you offer acts of kindness to touch the hearts of others wherever you go—whether they are random or planned. Kindness becomes a way of life.”
Roy T. Bennett
113.
“I don’t want my life to be defined by what is etched on a tombstone. I want it to be defined by what is etched in the lives and hearts of those I’ve touched.”
Steve Maraboli
114.
“Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”
J.M. Barrie
115.
“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.”
Brendan Behan
116.
“When you are joyful, when you say yes to life and have fun and project positivity all around you, you become a sun in the center of every constellation, and people want to be near you.”
Shannon L. Alder
117.
“Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity and fear of others. Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what ‘little’ acts have done for our world.”
Steve Maraboli
118.
“I admire those who do good and expect nothing in return.”
Roy T. Bennett
119.
“Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.”
Jesse Jackson
120.
“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Kurt Vonnegut
121.
“If you treat people right they will treat you right… ninety percent of the time.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
122.
“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”
Jane Goodall
123.
“I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.”
Steve Maraboli
124.
“Always find opportunities to make someone smile, and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life.”
Roy T. Bennett
125.
“Knowing the truth is not always a kindness.”
Rosamund Hodge
126.
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
Oscar Wilde
127.
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
Edith Wharton
128.
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Mother Teresa
129.
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is, at last, a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”
Ray Bradbury
130.
“Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.”
Roy T. Bennett
131.
“Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later.”
Alice Munro
132.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
133.
“When you find yourself in need of spiritual nourishment, it is in the opportunities to serve others that you will find the abundance you seek.”
Steve Maraboli
134.
“People who love themselves come across as very loving, generous and kind; they express their self-confidence through humility, forgiveness, and inclusiveness.”
Sanaya Roman
135.
“To belittle, you have to be little.”
Kahlil Gibran
136.
“Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot.”
Vera Nazarian
137.
“I couldn’t be kind to him after what he’d done, couldn’t be cruel after what I had done”
Rosamund Hodge
138.
“Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.”
Brian Tracy
139.
“The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.”
Criss Jami
140.
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
Dinah Maria Mulock
141.
“The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
142.
“Be kind to people and don’t judge, for you do not know what demons they carry and what battles they are fighting.”
Vashti Quiroz-Vega
143.
“Kindness has no religion. Religions are like narrow tracks but kindness is like an open sky.”
Amit Ray
144.
“One of the most spiritual things you can do is to embrace your humanity. Connect with those around you today. Say, “I love you”, “I’m sorry”, “I appreciate you”, “I’m proud of you”…whatever you’re feeling. Send random texts, write a cute note, embrace your truth and share it…cause a smile today for someone else…and give plenty of hugs.”
Steve Maraboli
145.
“The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to respect the woman that gave birth to his children. It is because of her that you have the greatest treasures in your life. You may have moved on, but your children have not. If you can’t be her soulmate, then at least be thoughtful. Whom your children love should always be someone that you acknowledge with kindness. Your children notice everything and will follow your example.”
Shannon L. Alder
146.
“The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
Mahatma Gandhi
147.
“… treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can’t until you do understand.”
Kim Harrison
148.
“You have a unique gift to offer this world. Be true to yourself, be kind to yourself, read and learn about everything that interests you and keep away from people who bring you down. When you treat yourself kindly and respect the uniqueness of those around you, you will be giving this world an amazing gift… YOU!”
Steve Maraboli
149.
“Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, and don’t put up with people that are reckless with yours.”
Mary Schmich
150.
“As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
I hope you enjoyed reading this selection of kindness quotes. What are your favorite quotes that express compassion, love, and kindness?
Stay victorious!
