A Quote by Johann Kaspar Lavater

No communication or gift can exhaust genius or impoverish charity.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Quote Topics

Charity Communication Exhaust Genius Gift No Communication

Quote Author

Johann Kaspar Lavater
German - Theologian
November 15, 1741 - January 2, 1801

Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.

Pope Benedict XVI

Nothing you do makes much of a difference if you do not have charity. You can speak with tongues, have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries, and possess all knowledge; even if you have the faith to move mountains, without charity it won't profit you at all.... Without charity-or the pure love of Christ-whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.

Maimonides

Charity is indeed, a great thing, and a gift of God, and when it is rightly ordered likens us unto God himself, as far as that is possible; for it is charity which makes the man.

Saint John Chrysostom

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

Igor Stravinsky

Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique dazzling gift. The gift of James Joyce, and not the talent of Henry James.

Vladimir Nabokov

When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.

Muhammad Yunus

It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else.

Henry David Thoreau

Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. The genius is a man who knows everything without having learned it.

Otto Weininger

We must recover the whole sense of gift, of gratuitousness, of solidarity. Rampant capitalism has taught the logic of profit at all costs, of giving to get, of exploitation without looking at the person... and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing! This Home is a place that teaches charity, a "school" of charity, which instructs me to go encounter every person, not for profit, but for love.

Pope Francis

Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.

Umberto Eco

Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.