Last Updated on September 6, 2024
Do you remember a time when someone showed you kindness? What did it make you feel afterward? When was the last time you showed kindness to others? What about to yourself? We live in a world where kindness— and for that matter, compassion—has become a rare occurrence.
Daily life might have gotten busier and distractions come in many different forms. But kindness remains constant; it has always been an integral part of the human condition.
Kindness has been with us from the day we were born up until our last day here on earth. It is everywhere and it can take on many forms, from a friend checking in on you to a random person giving you a helping hand with your grocery bags.
Kindness and Its Importance
Kindness is one of the values that makes our life and other’s lives better. It’s one of the things that makes us human. Kindness is being friendly and generous to others, as well as to yourself. It is linked to gentleness, compassion and empathy.
Kindness changes the way we view the world, others, and ourselves. Kindness can enrich your life, giving you more personal fulfillment and strengthening your relationships.
You can make a big impact on the lives of others even with the smallest acts of kindness. A simple greeting to your workmates, a gracious smile to a stranger, and giving alms or food to a less fortunate soul can change the day for your fellow human being.
There’s no telling where the repercussions of one kind act will end. Like a drop in a bucket, this can inspire others to pay it forward, and turn that small drop into a vast, endless ocean of kindness.
The Benefits of Being Kind
Kindness brings with it many benefits. In this increasingly cynical world we live in, choosing kindness may seem a naïve move sometimes. But taking the path of kindness gives us more psychological benefits than we think.
Kindness Keeps your Anxiety at Bay
Aside from promoting positive interaction and strong relationships, kindness can help ease anxiety. Anxious people have been found to experience fewer moments of positive emotions like joy, happiness, and curiosity.
Practicing acts of kindness opens up opportunities for anxious people to forget about their anxiety for a moment and redirect their attention to other people’s situation.
Kindness Makes You Feel Good
Have you noticed the way you feel after helping someone out and they look you in the eye while expressing their genuine gratitude to you? Feels good, doesn’t it? It has a ripple effect: you give love, you receive love—and you feel better doing so.
That’s because doing something nice for others boosts your serotonin levels. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter known to promote feelings of well-being and satisfaction.
Kindness Can Help Reduce Stress
You don’t have to go to great lengths to reduce stress. A study shows that when we’re negatively stressed, we tend to engage in prosocial behavior by reaching out to others and seek to interact in a positive manner.
Prosocial or affiliative behavior is the act or practice of building your relationship with others. When we feel overwhelmed with stress, doing acts of kindness can help us cope with stress and it can positively affect our mental and emotional health.
Ways to Practice Kindness
You can practice kindness every day! You can start by being more aware of your manners and by expressing genuine gratitude. Saying “please” makes your request a courteous one. A simple “thank you” is enough to express that you appreciate and acknowledge the value of what someone has done for you.
Reach out to a friend or a relative to check in on them. Let them know you’re thinking about them. A simple message is enough to make someone’s day.
You can also give out hugs. Hugs have the power to lift your spirits and to let someone know that they are loved.
Have you ever tried to imagine what a world without kindness would be like? Scary, isn’t it? A world without kindness would be cold and dull. There would be little to no vibrancy to the human spirit. Make the world a better place to live in by being kind to yourself and others.
Have you practiced kindness today?
Here are 90 quotes on kindness that have been thoughtfully selected in the hopes that these would inspire you to make kindness a part of your daily life.
Kindness Quotes
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” – Plato
“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” – Henry James
“A single act of kindness is like a drop of oil on a patch of dry skin—seeping, spreading, and affecting more than the original need.” – Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
“Kindness is a much more crushing force than anger.” – Samael Aun Weor, Revolution of the Dialectic
“His kindness was only meant to make later torments crueler.” – Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty
“Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.” – Roy T. Bennett
“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.” – Jack Kerouac, The Portable Jack Kerouac
“With one kind gesture you can change a life. One person at a time you can change the world. One day at a time we can change everything.” – Steve Maraboli, The Power of One
“Beauty in its best form is kindness, the most valuable currency in the world.” – Rebecca McNutt, Bittersweet Symphony
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Desmond Tutu
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain
“Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.” – Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
“Kindness trumps everything. Kind people are magnets for all of the good things in life.” – Tom Giaquinto, Be A Good Human
“You must always remember this: Have courage, and be kind. You have more kindness in your little finger than most people possess in their whole body. And it has power. More than you know.” – Brittany Candau, Have Courage, Be Kind
“A yogi is much more disciplined in his speech. Yogic tradition has it that speech must pass before three barriers prior to being uttered aloud. These barriers come in the form of three questions: Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?” – Prem Prakash
“Always find opportunities to make someone smile, and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life.” – Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” – Dalai Lama XIV
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.” – James Boswell
“There is no wrong way to perform an act of kindness.” – Catherine Ryan Hyde, Pay It Forward
“Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand and to watch over them in tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what pow’r it has over my mind.” – Joseph Smith Jr.
“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” – George Sand
“Be a little kinder than you have to.” – E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.” – Kahlil Gibran
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“I don’t care if you’re black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Simple as that.” – Robert Michaels MD, 2007 Graduation Speech
“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” – John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love
“But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword.” – Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
“Kindness can transform someone’s dark moment with a blaze of light. You’ll never know how much your caring matters. Make a difference for another today.” – Amy Leigh Mercree
“The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, History of Woman Suffrage, Volumes I-III
“It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place – because we become better people in it.” – Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
“Our kindness may be the most persuasive argument for that which we believe.” – Gordon B. Hinckley
“People will not remember what you did for living, they will remember how you touched them with kindness and loving.” – Debasish Mridha M.D.
“Choose being kind over being right and you’ll be right every time.” – Richard Carlson
“Be kind to one another. Bye, bye.” – Ellen DeGeneres
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
“As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” – J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
“They weren’t nice words he said. He could’ve lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.” – Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days
“All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.” – Kathryn Stockett, The Help
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao-Tzu
“People shouldn’t have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty.” – Maggie Stiefvater, Forever
“He is as full of valor as of kindness. Princely in both.” – William Shakespeare, Henry V
“Be kind to people and don’t judge, for you do not know what demons they carry and what battles they are fighting.” – Vashti Quiroz-Vega
“Compassion is a lifetime business. You can’t say something like, ‘I will have compassion on Monday, Thursdays and Fridays only. But for the rest, I will be cruel’. That is hypocrisy.” – Israelmore Ayivor
“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” – Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
“What is kinder – to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance – or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“This is what kindness does, Ms. Albert said. Each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world.” – Jacqueline Woodson, Each Kindness
“Perhaps the most ‘spiritual’ thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.” – Shannon Alder
“I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.” – Mother Teresa, A Gift for God
“I don’t want you to be young and beautiful. I only want one thing. I want you to be kind-hearted – and not just towards cats and dogs.” – Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate
“There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment.” – Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
“But once you accept the fact that you have always been alone, and will always be, then your perspective can begin to change. You can become aware of the small kindnesses, the little comforts. Be grateful for them.” – Linda Olsson, Astrid and Veronika
“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” – Andy Rooney
“Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.” – Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3
“But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.” – Neal Shusterman, Scythe
“If we have the opportunity to be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach.” – Margaret Cho
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!” – Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
“Because I haven’t yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.” – Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl
“Know that the same spark of life that is within you, is within all of our animal friends, the desire to live is the same within all of us…” – Rai Aren, Secret of the Sands
“Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.” – Robert Brault
“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.” – Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
“Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later.” – Alice Munro
“Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Sometimes it’s easy to lose faith in people. And sometimes one act of kindness is all it takes to give you hope again.” – Randa Abdel-Fattah, Does My Head Look Big in This?
“The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.” – Albert Einstein
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” – Wendy Mass, The Candymakers
“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.” – Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
“Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see I have been found out.” – Margaret Edson, Wit
“A random act of kindness, no matter how small, can make a tremendous impact on someone else’s life.” – Roy Bennett
“Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.” – Brian Tracy
“What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
“It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.” – Aldous Huxley
“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
“There is nothing so rewarding as to make people realize that they are worthwhile in this world.” – Bob Anderson
“For it is in giving that we receive.” – St. Francis of Assisi
“Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”– J. M. Barrie
“Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.” – William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
“If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.” – J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
“The shortest distance between two people is a smile.” – Victor Borge
“Be kind. Always if you have a choice, be kind.” – Anne Rice
“A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone and yet its powers can vanquish kingdoms.” – Og Mandino
“If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.” – Judith Martin
“Treat other people’s home as you want them to respect yours because what goes around comes around.” – Ana Monnar
“Every sunrise is an invitation for us to arise and brighten someone’s day.” – Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
“Be kind to people whether they deserve your kindness or not. If your kindness reaches the deserving good for you if your kindness reaches the undeserving take joy in your compassion.” – James Fadiman, Essential Sufism
“Mean girls go far in high school. Kind women go far in life.” – Mandy Hale, The Single Woman
“…our souls may be consumed by shadows, but that doesn’t mean we have to behave as monsters.” – Emm Cole, The Short Life of Sparrows
“Once you begin to acknowledge random acts of kindness – both the ones you have received and the ones you have given – you can no longer believe that what you do does not matter.” – Dawna Markova
