Magnanimous Quotes:

We must not let the actions or words of others determine our responses. Magnanimous people make the choice to respond to the indignities of others based upon their own principles and their own value system rather than their moods or anger.

- Stephen Covey

topic: People, Choices, Principles, Interpersonal Skills, Indignity

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

- Cheryl Strayed

topic: Believe, Believe In Yourself, Hundred, Magnanimous

It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others.

- Aristotle

topic: Kindness, Men, Favors, Kindness To Others, Magnanimous

How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world around them.

- Van Wyck Brooks

topic: People, Mind, World, Generous People, Good Breeding

Mighty of heart, mighty of mind, magnanimous-to be this is indeed to be great in life.

- John Ruskin

topic: Heart, Generosity, Mind, Magnanimous

Only the truly magnanimous and strong are capable of forgiving and loving.

- Kim Dae-jung

source: Dae Jung Kim (2004). “The 21st century and the Korean people: selected speeches of Kim Dae-jung, 1998-2004”

topic: Strong, Forgiving, Capable, Magnanimous

There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

- George Washington

topic: Order, Heaven, Unions, Inaugural, Virtue And Happiness

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

- Van Wyck Brooks

source: Van Wyck Brooks (1941). “Opinions of Oliver Allston”, New York, Dutton

topic: Jealousy, Vanity, People, Magnanimous

Mankind can be very magnanimous, given the chance.

- Karin Fossum

topic: Chance, Given, Mankind, Magnanimous

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.

- Henri Frederic Amiel

topic: Too Much, Lost, Distrust, Magnanimous

You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company - a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnanimous companion.

- Orison Swett Marden

topic: Honesty, Good Company, Companion, Magnanimous

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need to posses and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-lar ge souled.

- Sam Keen

source: Sam Keen (1995). “Hymns to an unknown God: awakening the spirit in everyday life”, Bantam

topic: Spiritual, Gratitude, Ego, Connoisseur, Alchemy

In dealing with good people one should be magnanimous; in dealing with bad people one should be strict. In dealing with average people one should combine magnanimity and strictness.

- Zicheng Hong

topic: Average, People, Taoism, Magnanimous

It takes no effort to love. The state has its own innate joy. Questions answer themselves if you are aware enough. Life is safe; flowing with the current of being is the simplest way to live. Resistance never really succeeds. Controlling the flow of life is impossible.

- Deepak Chopra

topic: Motivational, Spiritual, Effort, Magnanimous

What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn't it because you're young, because you haven't had time to suffer till you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward, isn't it because you cannot foresee or expect anything terrible, because so far life has been hidden from your young eyes? You are bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think only, be just a little magnanimous, and have mercy on me.

- Anton Chekhov

topic: Eye, Thinking, Sight, Magnanimous, Important Questions

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave.

- Albert Pike

source: Albert Pike “Morals and Dogma : Scottish Rite in Freemasonry”, Lulu.com

topic: Wise, Opposites, Brave, Frugal, Magnanimous

Men are more compassionate/(nobler)/magnanimous/generous than God; for men forgive their dead, but God does not.

- Mark Twain

topic: Religious, Men, Forgiving, Magnanimous

In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.

- William Lloyd Garrison

topic: Truth, Heroic, Embrace, Magnanimous

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger--so it be done for love, and not forostentation--do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

topic: Character, Giving, Perfect, Magnanimous

The real you, the inner you, is pure, very pure. It's loving and it's magnanimous. It understands. It has patience. It is tolerant-it will wait forever while your ego trots all over everywhere trying to figure life out. It is pleasing to remember that back home there is a friend who's waiting for you to stop being silly, who's waiting to welcome you with open arms if and when you show up.

- Stuart Wilde

topic: Real, Silly, Home, Open Arms, Real You

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.

- Eric Hoffer

topic: Humble, Sacrifice, Self, Magnanimous

I feel like most people aren't either/or, they're both/and. You're both magnanimous and petty. You're both kind and cruel. You're never just one thing.

- Greta Gerwig

source: "The Funniest Movie Of The Summer". Interview with BuzzFeed News, www.buzzfeed.com.

topic: People, Kind, Feels, Either Or, Magnanimous

It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men.

- Johann Kaspar Lavater

topic: God, Wise, Humble, Magnanimous

I have never on the field of battle sent you where I was unwilling to go myself, nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers. You can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and will be magnanimous.

- Nathan Bedford Forrest

source: "Farewell address". May 9, 1865.

topic: War, Law, Government, Good Soldiers, Magnanimous

You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.239

topic: Generosity, Giving, Debt, Magnanimity, Magnanimous

If you desire to be magnanimous, undertake nothing rashly, and fear nothing thou undertakest; fear nothing but infamy; dare anything but injury; the measure of magnanimity is neither to be rash nor timorous.

- Francis Quarles

topic: Desire, Injury, Fear Nothing, Magnanimity, Infamy

There is nothing magnanimous in bearing misfortunes with fortitude, when the whole world is looking on.... He who, without friends to encourage or even without hope to alleviate his misfortunes, can behave with tranquility and indifference, is truly great.

- Oliver Goldsmith

source: Oliver Goldsmith (1825). “A History of the Earth: And Animated Nature”, p.870

topic: Strength, World, Indifference, Without Friends, Magnanimous

It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men - so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

source: Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

topic: Friendship, Men, Two, Magnanimous

In your school you take part in various activities that habituate you not to shut yourselves in on yourselves or in your small world, but to be open to others, especially to the poorest and neediest, to work to improve the world in which we live. Be men and women with others and for others, real champions in the service of others. To be magnanimous with interior liberty and a spirit of service, spiritual formation is necessary. Dear children, dear youths, love Jesus Christ ever more!

- Pope Francis

source: Pope Francis during meeting with Students of Jesuit Schools, zenit.org. June 7, 2013.

topic: Spiritual, Jesus, Children, Spiritual Formation, Small World

I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me

- George Eliot

source: George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.84, Penguin

topic: People, Speak, Enough, Magnanimous

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.

- Mao Zedong

source: Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.13, Lulu.com

topic: Party, Writing, Dinner, Courteous, Insurrection

Then to the victor go the spoils. You rise up by lifting, you know, each other up. You win. And so isn't this the time to be magnanimous like Donald Trump is and not to be, you know, predicting or projecting on to the press how they must cover him. They're going to cover him how they see fit.

- Megyn Kelly

source: Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

topic: Winning, Fit, Trump, Predicting, Magnanimous

In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.

- Leon Trotsky

topic: Struggle, Serious, Cruelty, Magnanimous

I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.496, Simon and Schuster

topic: Friendship, Eye, Snakes, Steadiness, Magnanimous

There is an indissoluble union between a magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.

- George Washington

topic: Unions, Politics, Rewards, Magnanimous

The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way.

- Deborah Tannen

topic: Power, Doors, Hands, Upper Hand, Magnanimous

The next time we met was at Appomattox, and the first thing that General Grant said to me when we stepped inside, placing his hand in mine was, Pete, let us have another game of brag, to recall the days that were so pleasant. Great God! I thought to myself, how my heart swells out to such magnanimous touch of humanity. Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?

- James Longstreet

source: The New York Times, July 24, 1885.

topic: Brother, War, Heart, General Grant, Magnanimous

We can do anything, or almost, but how balanced, magnanimous, and modest one has to be to do anything! And also how patient. It is as true in the arts as anywhere else.

- May Sarton

topic: Patience, Art, Patient, Magnanimous

It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

- George Washington

topic: People, Giving, Justice, Farewell Address, Great Nations

When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness.

- Washington Irving

topic: Rome, Purple, Different, Supplication, Destitute

If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.

- Epictetus

source: Epictetus (2012). “Enchiridion”, p.15, Courier Corporation

topic: Money, Faithful, Way, Magnanimous

If the gentleman has ability, he is magnanimous, generous, tolerant, and straightforward, through which he opens the way to instruct others.

- Xunzi

topic: Gentleman, Way, Ability, Being Straightforward, Magnanimous

A very magnanimous statement, Gideon,” said Magnus. “I’m Gabriel.” Magnus waved a hand. “All Lightwoods look the same to me.

- Cassandra Clare

source: Cassandra Clare (2014). “Clockwork Princess”, p.262, Simon and Schuster

topic: Hands, Gideon, Looks, Magnus Bane, Clockwork Princess

how magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity?

- Laura Lippman

topic: Gestures, Magnanimity, Magnanimous

Man is a free moral agent and can be magnanimous and deal disinterestedly, humanity is a definite goal, social justice is desirable and possible, individual lives may be gloriously diversified, uniquely individualized, and yet socially useful; or, these are mere phrases, snares to catch gulls, soothing syrup for our troubled souls.

- George Amos Dorsey

topic: Men, Justice, Goal, Individual Life, Syrup

No leader did more for his country than Winston Churchill. Brave, magnanimous, traditional, he was like a king-general from Britain's heroic past. His gigantic qualities set him apart from ordinary humanity; there seemed no danger he feared, no effort too great for his limitless energies.

- Gretchen Rubin

source: Gretchen Rubin (2004). “Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life”, p.12, Random House

topic: Country, Kings, Past, Magnanimous

Lyndon Johnson was thirteen of the most interesting and difficult men I ever met. He could be as couth as he was uncouth, as magnanimous as malicious, at times proud and sensitive, at times paranoid and darkly uneasy with himself. Freud would have had a field day with him.

- Bill Moyers

source: Source: progressive.org

topic: Men, Interesting, Fields, Uneasy, Uncouth