Be just before you be generous. [ Proverb ]

One can love any man that is generous. [ Leigh Hunt ]

God blesses still the generous thought
And still the fitting word He speeds,
And truth, at His requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds. [ Whittier ]

A generous confession disarms slander. [ Proverb ]

'Tis easier for the generous to forgive.
Than for offence to ask it. [ Thomson ]

Generous as brave.
Affection, kindness, and the sweet office
Of love and duty, were to him as needful
As his daily bread. [ Rogers ]

Genius is only as rich as it is generous. [ Thoreau ]

Be gentle, genteel, genuine and generous.

The truly generous is the truly wise;
And he who loves not others, lives unblest. [ Horace ]

To pour the fresh instruction over the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast. [ Thomson ]

A generous heart repairs a slanderous tongue. [ Homer ]

The generous warmth that prompts to worthy deeds. [ Gifford ]

Generous souls are still most subject to credulity. [ Sir W. Davenant ]

Almost always the most indigent are the most generous. [ Stanislaus ]

Men are very generous with that which costs them nothing. [ Proverb ]

Emulation is lively and generous, envy base and .malicious. [ Proverb ]

Let us be generous of our dignity, as well as of our money. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

It is generous to bear an injury, but dangerous to requite it. [ Proverb ]

The generous man pays for nothing so much as what is given him. [ Proverb ]

Few men are both rich and generous; fewer are both rich and humble. [ Cardinal Manning ]

In a word, to be a fine gentleman is to be a generous and brave man. [ Steele ]

Sleep is a generous thief; he gives to vigor what he takes from time. [ Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania ]

The secret pleasure of a generous act is the great mind's great bribe. [ Dryden ]

Nothing more excites to everything noble and generous than virtuous love. [ Henry Home ]

If a man be endued with a generous mind, this is the best kind of nobility. [ Plato ]

All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them. [ Aime-Martin ]

Some women are so just and discerning that they never see an opportunity to be generous.

There never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate. [ South ]

How much easier it is to be generous than just! Men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest. [ Junius ]

Friendship consists properly in mutual offices, and a generous strife in alternate acts of kindness. [ South ]

Though the generous man care the least for wealth; yet he will be the most galled with the want of it. [ Proverb ]

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing. [ Alexander Pope ]

Every generous action loves the public view, yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it. [ Cicero ]

A true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. [ Burke ]

The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven. [ Lavater ]

To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannonbullets. [ William Shakespeare ]

Be generous, and pleasant-tempered, and forgiving; even as God scatters favors over thee, do thou scatter over the people. [ Saadi ]

Open, candid, and generous, his heart was the constant companion of his hand, and his tongue the artless index of his mind. [ George Canning ]

A complete and generous education fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices of peace and war. [ Milton ]

Good-nature is the very air of a good mind, the sign of a large and generous soul, and the peculiar soil in which virtue prospers. [ Goodman ]

In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house. In the tumult of war both sides applaud an heroic deed. [ T. W. Higginson ]

Success resembles a generous wine which begins by exciting the intellectual faculties, and ends by plunging us into a stupid intoxication. [ Alfred Bougeart ]

Love is the most terrible, and also the most generous, of the passions: it is the only one that includes in its dreams the happiness of some one else. [ A. Karr ]

A man or a woman may be highly irritable, and yet be sweet, tender, gentle, loving, sociable, kind, charitable, thoughtful for others, unselfish, generous. [ Charles Buxton ]

A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility only, denominate men great and glorious. [ Addison ]

We must prune it with care, so as only to remove the redundant branches, and not injure the stem, which has its root in the generous sensitiveness to shame. [ Plutarch ]

There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar. [ Goldsmith ]

Genius is only as rich as it is generous. If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have leisure and a quiet mind. [ Henry D. Thoreau ]

Do not believe that a book is good, if in reading it thou dost not feel more contented with thy existence, if it does not rouse up in thee most generous feelings. [ Lavater ]

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Unwillingness to acknowledge whatever is good in religion foreign to our own has always been a very common trait of human nature; but it seems to me neither generous nor just. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]

Sympathy is the first great lesson which man should learn.... Unless he learns to feel for things in which he has no personal interest, he can achieve nothing generous or noble. [ Talfourd ]

Does the man live who has not felt this spur to action, in a more or less generous spirit? Emulation lives so near to envy that it is sometimes difficult to establish the boundary-lines. [ Henry Giles ]

It is good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallowtrade; you must know where to find yourself. [ George Eliot ]

We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence. [ Bovee ]

I consider beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment due to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous, and true, is to be, in a manner, good, generous, and true yourself. [ Dr. Arnold ]

There is something cordial in a fat man, everybody likes him, and he likes everybody. Food does a fat man good; it clings to him; it fructifies upon him; he swells nobly out, and fills a generous space in life. [ Henry Giles ]

How would that excellent mystery, wedded life, irradiate the world with its blessed influences, were the generous impulses and sentiments of courtship but perpetuated in all their exuberant fullness during the sequel of marriage! [ Frederic Saunders ]

Emulation is a handsome passion; it is enterprising, but just withal. It keeps a man within the terms of honor, and makes the contest for glory just and generous. He strives to excel, but it is by raising himself, not by depressing others. [ Jeremy Collier ]

How mighty is the human heart, with all its complicated energies; this living source of all that moves the world! this temple of liberty, this kingdom of heaven, this altar of God, this throne of goodness, so beautiful in holiness, so generous in love! [ Henry Giles ]

What is the world, or its opinion, to him who has studied in the lives of men the mysteries of their egotism and perfidy! He knows that the best and most generous hearts are often forced to tread the thorny paths, where insults and outrages are heaped upon them! [ George Sand ]

I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. [ Dr. Johnson ]

There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [ John Ruskin ]

The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man's general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters turns upon one shilling. [ Chesterfield ]