Humility makes you grateful and gratitude makes you kind.
From A Pocket Guide to Being Human, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The man who fills the feeder on Linden Street was out late today, and I watched him stand a while in the cold with the empty scoop in his hand. For years I took him for a generous sort, the kind who gives because he has plenty. Then I saw his coat, which is the same coat he wore when I first came to this yard, and the patch at the elbow that his wife must have put there. He has very little and he knows exactly how little, and that is the whole of it: humility makes you grateful and gratitude makes you kind. I had the order backwards most of my life, thinking kindness came first and the rest followed after, a reward for good behavior. Switch came down for the sunflower seeds and did not say thank you, and I did not think the man minded.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- You will walk more confidently if you watch the road than if you watch your feet.
- There are no empty gestures made with a full heart.
- Before you sharpen your tongue, remember that it spends most of its time in your mouth.
- To have the same conversation with another that you have with yourself takes a pure heart.
- It doesn’t all fit because it’s not all needed.
- How I breathe is how I live.