“If you give something to one in need, let the cheerfulness of your face precede your gift, and comfort his sorrow with kind words. When you do this, by your gift the gladness of his mind surpasses even the needs of his body”
+ St. Isaac of Nineveh, Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian
Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.
— St. Augustine of Hippo
It is not from your own goods that you give to the beggar; it is a portion of his own that you are restoring to him. The Earth belongs to all. So you are paying back a debt and think you are making a gift to which you are not bound.
-Saint Ambrose of Milan
