Paddy Chayefsky Quotes

It costs you something to do good!

Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

Charity is a supreme virtue, and the great channel through which the mercy of God is passed onto mankind.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

It is royal to do good and be abused.

What is superfluous to your poor estate, distribute. This is distributive charity: a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom.

Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.

How much easier is it to be generous than just.

God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with.

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.

True religion... is giving and finding one's happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.

Sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the elect of each generation suffers for the salvation of the rest.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

I say, If everybody in this house lives where it's God first, friends and family second and you third, we won't ever have an argument.

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.

They do injury to the good who spares the bad.

'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.

Our calling is not primarily to be holy women, but to work for God and for others with Him.

Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.

Virtue is its own reward. We only invented concepts like heaven and hell to describe how we feel. We don't feel good doing bad and it's nice to help someone.

Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice.