Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Charity
In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do.
John Quincy Adams—Letter to A. Branson. July 30, 1838.
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
Addison—The Guardian. No. 166.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.
Bacon—Essay. On Goodness.
Charity and treating begin at home.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Wit without Money. Sc. 2.
Let them learn first to show pity at home.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Wit without Money. Sc. 2. Marston—Histrio-Matrix. 3. 165.
The voice of the world [“Charity begins at home”].
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici.
No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.
Burke—Reflections on the Revolution in France. (1790).
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
I Corinthians. XIII. 1.
Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
I Corinthians. XIII. 2.
Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.
I Corinthians. XIII. 4.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
I Corinthians. XIII. 13.
True Charity, a plant divinely nurs’d.
Cowper—Charity. L. 573.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.
Gray—Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Epitaph.
When your courtyard twists, do not pour the water abroad.
Grefs.
Meek and lowly, pure and holy,
Chief among the “blessed three.”
Charles Jefferys—Charity.
In silence,***
Steals on soft-handed Charity,
Tempering her gifts, that seem so free,
By time and place,
Till not a woe the bleak world see,
But finds her grace.
Keble—The Christian Year. The Sunday After Ascension Day. St. 6.
He is truly great who hath a great charity.
Thomas à Kempis—Imitation of Christ. Bk. I. Ch. III. Dibdin’s trans.
In necessasariis, unitas; In dubiis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas.
In things essential, unity; in doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity.
Rupertus Meldenius. So attributed by Canon Farrar at Croyden Church Congress, 1877. Also attributed to Melancthon. Quoted as “A gude saying o’ auld Mr. Guthrie” in A Crack aboot the Kirk, appended to Memoirs of Norman Maclood, D.D. Vol. I. P. 340.
All crush’d and stone-cast in behaviour,
She stood as a marble would stand,
Then the Saviour bent down, and the Saviour
In silence wrote on in the sand.
Joaquin Miller—Charity.
Charité bien ordonné commence par soy meme.
Charity well directed should begin at home.
Montluc—La Comédie de Proverbes. Act III. Sc. 7.
Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
I Peter. IV. 8.
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind’s concern is charity.
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. III. L. 307.
Soft peace she brings, wherever she arrives:
She builds our quiet, as she forms our lives:
Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even,
And opens in each heart a little Heaven.
Prior—Charity.
Charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 364.
Charity,
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 68.
I believe there is no sentiment he has such faith in as that “charity begins at home”
And his, I presume, is of that domestic sort which never stirs abroad at all.
Sheridan—School for Scandal. Act V. Sc. 1.
Our charity begins at home,
And mostly ends where it begins.
Horace Smith—Horace in London. Bk. II. Ode 15.
Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity.
Southey—Soldier’s Wife.
Proximus sum egomet mihi.
Charity begins at home. (Free trans.)
Terence—Andria. Act IV. Sc. 1. 12. Greek from Menander. See note to Andria. Act II. Sc. 5. 16. (Valpy’s ed.)
Let them learn first to show piety at home.
I Timothy. V. 4.