Kindness is the quality of being considerate, compassionate, generous, gentle, and caring towards others without expecting anything in return. Often described as a virtue, kindness is also a strength—in fact, it may be one of humanity's greatest superpowers. Kindness enriches our relationships with friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers. Kindness opens our hearts to perfect strangers, both those we encounter in our daily lives and those who live continents away. What's more, kindness is good for our health—a finding backed by numerous studies and brain science. Practicing kindness increases levels of oxytocin and serotonin, the "feel-good" hormones, and decreases feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression. Perhaps best of all, kindness is contagious: kind acts often have a ripple effect.
So, why not make a pact with yourself to be a kinder person? And whenever you need a little encouragement or gentle reminder, turn to these 25 quotes from authors who understand the power of kindness and express it quite remarkably.
1. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about." -Wendy Mass, The Candymakers
2. "There is no wrong way to perform an act of kindness." -Catherine Ryan Hyde, Pay It Forward
3. "You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." -Debbie Macomber, One Simple Act
4. "But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword." -Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
5. "You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too." -Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
6. "Be a little kinder than you have to." -E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
7. "You know, some things don't matter that much...Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart—now, that matters." -Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
8. "When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less." -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
9. "All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries." -Kathryn Stockett, The Help
10. "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
11. "People shouldn't have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty." -Maggie Stiefvater, Forever
12. "You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward." -Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
13. "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
14. "To belittle, you have to be little." -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
15. "You can't worry about the rest of the world, never mind the rest of the universe. All you can do is look to your left and your right and try to be kind to whoever is there." -Rowan Coleman, We Are All Made of Stars
16. "And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him." -Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
17. "Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver." -Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
18. "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
19. "People want to be good. Deep down. Kind. The problem of course is that it isn't always possible to be kind to idiots, because they're idiots." -Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
20. "What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man." -Deanna Raybourn, Silent on the Moor
21. "To reprove a harm-doer, put him to shame by doing a good deed in return." -Thiruvalluvar, Thirukkural
22. "Time itself is created through deeds of true kindness." -Dara Horn, The World to Come
23. "There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham." -Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
24. "One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls." -Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
25. "Anger is effortless. Kindness is hard. Try to exert yourself." -Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings
