Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.
Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
I take as my guide the hope of a saint: in crucial things, unity... in important things, diversity... in all things, generosity.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
The only gift is a portion of thyself.
The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.
