Gifts

A gift (or a present) is the transfer of something without the expectation of receiving something in return.

• Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
  • Gautama Buddha Dhammapada, (verse 202), translator: Narada Maha Thera

• He ne'er considered it as loth
  To look a gift-horse in the mouth,
  And very wisely would lay forth
  No more upon it than 'twas worth;
  But as he got it freely, so
  He spent it frank and freely too:
  For saints themselves will sometimes be,
  Of gifts that cost them nothing, free.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663–64), Canto I, line 489.

• The gifts of a bad man bring no good with them.
  • Euripides, Medea, line 618.

• πείθειν δῶρα καὶ θεοὺς λόγος
  • Translation: It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.
  • Euripides, Medea, line 964.

• It was the custom of the Roman emperors, at their triumphal entrance, to cast new coins among the multitudes; so doth Christ, in His triumphal ascension into heaven, throw the greatest gifts for the good of men that were ever given.
  • Thomas Goodwin reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 78.

• A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery—as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• The exchange relationships we choose determine whether we share them as a common gift or sell them as a private commodity. A great deal rests on that choice. For the greater part of human history, and in places in the world today, common resources were the rule. But some invented a different story, a social construct in which everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one. One of these stories sustains the living systems on which we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the world. One of these stories asks us to bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our kinship with the world. We can choose. If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• The earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we cannot provide ourselves.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 103. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• Duties and gifts are two sides of the same coin. Eagles were given the gift of far sight, so it is their duty to watch over us. Rain fulfills its duty as it falls, because it was given the gift of sustaining life. What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking "What is our responsibility?" is the same as asking "What is our gift?" It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• I’ve heard it said that sometimes, in return for the gifts of the earth, gratitude is enough. It is our uniquely human gift to express thanks, because we have the awareness and the collective memory to remember that the world could well be otherwise, less generous than it is.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8. 

• I do not the know the happiness of receiving; and often I dreamed that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.
  This is my poverty, that my hand never rests from bestowing; this is my envy, that I see waiting eyes and the illuminated nights of longing.
  Oh misery of all bestowers! Oh darkening of my sun! Oh craving to crave! Oh ravenous hunger in satiety!
  They receive from me, but do I still touch their souls? There is a cleft between giving and receiving; and the closest cleft is the last to be bridged.
  A hunger grows out of my beauty; I wish to harm those for whom I shine, I wish to rob those on whom I have bestowed: – thus I hunger for malice.
  Withdrawing my hand when a hand already reaches for it; hesitating like the waterfall that hesitates even while plunging – thus I hunger for malice.
  My fullness plots such vengeance; such trickery gushes from my loneliness.
  My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing, my virtue wearied of itself in its superabundance!
  For one who always bestows, the danger is loss of shame; whoever dispenses always has calloused hands and heart from sheer dispensing.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1891), Night Song, translated by Adrian Del Caro

• Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility." This is my gift, my curse.
  • Spider-Man (Peter Parker), interpreted by Tobey Maguire in the film (David Koepp, last lines of Spider-Man (2002 film).

• Eo animo quidque debetur quo datur, nec quantum sit sed a quali profectum voluntate perpenditur.
  • Translation: The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the gift is acknowledged; it is the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that is weighed.
  • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, no. 81, sect. 6; translation from Tochi Omenukor Words of a Woman (New York: Writer's Club Press, 2002) p. 15.

• He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.
  • Seneca the Younger, On Benefits, Book II, 22, line 1.

• Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iii, scene 1. (1600–1602).

• The higher giving is anonymous giving.
  • Gene Simmons, interview with Radio.com (July 6, 2016)

• Every gift of noble origin
  Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.
  • William Wordsworth, These Times Strike Monied Worldlings, l. 1 (1803).

• The only gift is a portion of thyself. … Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing."
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gifts, from Essays: Second Series (1844).

• Quran (16:71) - "Allah has bestowed His gifts of sustenance more freely on some of you than on others: those more favored are not going to throw back their gifts to those whom their right hands possess, so as to be equal in that respect. Will they then deny the favors of Allah?"

The Bible on Wikisource.

• A gift is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it.
  • Proverbs, xvii. 8.

• As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another.
  • 1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 311-13.

• It is more blessed to give than to receive.
  • Acts, XX. 35.

• Like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.
  • Tom Brown, Laconics.

• It is not the weight of jewel or plate,
  Or the fondle of silk or fur;
  'Tis the spirit in which the gift is rich,
  As the gifts of the Wise Ones were,
  And we are not told whose gift was gold,
  Or whose was the gift of myrrh.
  • Edmund Vance Cooke, The Spirit of the Gift.

• The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Gifts.

• It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.
  • Euripides, Medea, 964.

• Gleich schenken? das ist brav. Da wird er reüssieren.
  • Presents at once? That's good. He is sure to succeed.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, I. 7. 73.

• Denn Geben ist Sache des Reichen.
  • For to give is the business of the rich.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann und Dorothea, I. 15.

• Die Gaben
  Kommen von oben herab, in ihren eignen Gestalten.
  • Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Hermann und Dorothea, Canto V, line 69.

• Der Mutter schenk' ich,
  Die Tochter denk' ich.
  • I make presents to the mother, but think of the daughter.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sprüche in Reimen, III.

• Give an inch, he'll take an ell.
  • Thomas Hobbes, Liberty and Necessity. No. 111.
  • John Webster, Sir Thomas Wyatt.

• Rare gift! but oh, what gift to fools avails!
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book 10, line 29. Pope's translation.

• Omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.
  • Everything that is superfluous overflows from the full bosom.
  • Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), 337.

• Noli equi dentes inspicere donati.
  • Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
  • St. Jerome, On the Epistie to the Ephesians. According to Richard Chenevix Trench, explanation that his writings were free-will offerings, when fault was found with them. Found also in Vulgaria Stambrigi. (About 1510).

• "Presents," I often say, "endear Absents."
  • Charles Lamb, A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.

• Denn der Wille
  Und nicht die Gabe macht den Geber.
  • For the will and not the gift makes the giver.
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise, I. 5.

• Parvis mobilis rebus animus muliebris.
  • A woman's mind is affected by the meanest gifts.
  • Livy, Annales, VI. 34.

• Not what we give, but what we share,—
  For the gift without the giver is bare.
  • James Russell Lowell, Vision of Sir Launfal, Part II, Stanza 8.

• In giving, a man receives more than he gives, and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.
  • George MacDonald, Mary Marston, Chapter V.

• Quisquis magna dedit, voluit sibi magna remitti.
  • Whoever makes great presents, expects great presents in return.
  • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), V. 59. 3.

• Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
  • Matthew, VII. 9.

• And wisest he in this whole wide land
  Of hoarding till bent and gray;
  For all you can hold in your cold, dead hand
  Is what you have given away.
  . . . . . .
  He gave with a zest and he gave his best;
  Give him the best to come.
  • Joaquin Miller, Peter Cooper.

• All we can hold in our cold dead hands is what we have given away.
  • Old Sanscrit proverb.

• Take gifts with a sigh: most men give to be paid.
  • John Boyle O'Reilly, Rules of the Road.

• Res est ingeniosa dare.
  • Giving requires good sense.
  • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), I. 8. 62.

• Majestatem res data dantis habet.
  • The gift derives its value from the rank of the giver.
  • Ovid, Epistolæ Ex Ponto, IV. 9. 68.

• Acceptissima semper munera sunt auctor quæ pretiosa facit.
  • Those gifts are ever the most acceptable which the giver makes precious.
  • Ovid, Heriodes, XVII. 71.

• Dicta docta pro datis.
  • Smooth words in place of gifts.
  • Plautus, Asinaria, Act III.

• Altera manu fert lapidem, panem ostentat altera.
  • In one hand he bears a stone, with the other offers bread.
  • Plautus, Aulularia, Act II. 2. 18.

• The horseleech hath two daughters, crying Give, give.
  • Proverbs, XXX. 15.

• Bis dat qui cito dat.
  • He gives twice who gives quickly.
  • Credited to Publius Mimus by Langius, in Polyanth. Noviss, p. 382. Erasmus—Adagia, p. 265, (Ed. 1579) quoting Seneca. Compare Seneca, De Beneficiis, II. 1. Homer—Iliad, XVIII. 98. Title of epigram in a book entitled Joannis Owen, Oxeniensis Angli Epigrammatum. (1632) P. 148. Also in Manipulus Sacer, Concionum Maralium, Collectus ex Voluminibus R. P. Hieremiæ Drexelii (1644). Euripides, Rhes. 333. Ausonius, Epigram 83. 1. (Trans.) Alciatus, Emblemata 162.

• He always looked a given horse in the mouth.
  • François Rabelais, Works, Book I, Chapter XI.

• Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving;
  Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving.
  • Richard Realf, Indirection.

• Fabius Verrucosus beneficium ab homine duro aspere datum, panem lapidosum vocabat.
  • Fabius Verrucosus called a favor roughly bestowed by a hard man, bread made of stone.
  • Seneca the Younger, De Beneficiis, II. 7.

• Deus quædam munera universo humano generi dedit, a quibus excluditur nemo.
  • God has given some gifts to the whole human race, from which no one is excluded.
  • Seneca the Younger, De Beneficiis, IV. 28.

• Cum quod datur spectabis, et dantem adspice!
  While you look at what is given, look also at the giver.
  • Seneca the Younger, Thyestes, CCCXVI.

• Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
  I would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act I, scene 2, line 34.

• Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600–02), Act III, scene 1, line 101.

• All other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act 1, scene 2, line 194.

• Win her with gifts, if she respect not words;
  Dumb jewels often in their silent kind
  More than quick words do move a woman's mind.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act III, scene 1, line 89.

• Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
  • I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), II. 49.

• Parta meæ Veneri sunt munera; namque notavi
  Ipse locum aëriæ quo congessere palumbes.
  • I have found out a gift for my fair;
    I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.
  • Virgil, Eclog, III. 68. English by Shenstone. Pastoral, II. Hope. Erroneously attributed to Rowe by Thomas Hughes in Tom Brown's School Days.

• People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how it’s a gift.
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer Interview with The Guardian (2020)

• Denn was ein Mensch auch hat, so sind's am Ende Gaben.
  • For whatever a man has, is in reality only a gift.
  • Wieland—Oberen, II. 19.

• Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
  When I give I give myself.
  • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself, 40.

• Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
  Of nicely calculated less or more.
  • William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Part III. No. 43.

• She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
  And humble cares, and delicate fears;
  A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
  And love, and thought, and joy.
  • William Wordsworth, The Sparrow's Nest.

• That every gift of noble origin
  Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.
  • William Wordsworth, These Times Strike Monied Worldlings.

• A wicked man's gift hath a touch of his master.
  • Latin proverbs and quotations: With translations and parallel passages and a copious English index. 1869. p. 214. 

• Bestowing
• Generosity