"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
— Walt Whitman

"Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope."
— Barack Obama

"The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served."
— Gordon B. Hinckley (Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes)

"At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in."
— Mother Teresa

"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"You are what you do, not what you say you'll do."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"I'm inspired by the people I meet in my travels--hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency. I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man."
— Barack Obama

"When faith replaces doubt, when selfless service eliminates selfish striving, the power of God brings to pass His purposes."
— Thomas S. Monson

"God does watch over us and does notice us, but it usually through someone else that he meets our needs."
— Spencer W. Kimball

"I cannot choose but adhere to the word of God, which has possession of my conscience; nor can I possibly, nor will I even make any recantation, since it is neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God! Amen."
— Martin Luther

"Though my work may be menial, though my contribution may be small, I can perform it with dignity and offer it with unselfishness. My talents may not be great, but I can use them to bless the lives of others.... The goodness of the world in which we live is the accumulated goodness of many small and seemingly inconsequential acts."
— Gordon B. Hinckley

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."
— Rabindranath Tagore

"Remember that yours is not the only heart that may be wishing for love."
— Cameron Dokey (Before Midnight: A Retelling of "Cinderella")

"Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them."
— W.H. Auden

"The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace"
— Mother Teresa

"Don't mistake activity with achievement."
— John Wooden

"Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

"
— Marian Wright Edelman

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But...the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'"
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself- to serve."
— William P. Young (The Shack)

"Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same -- with charity you give love, so don't just give money but reach out your hand instead."
— Mother Teresa (A Simple Path: Mother Teresa)

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found a way to serve."
— Albert Schweitzer

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams"
— David McCullough (John Adams)

"For all works and things, which are either commanded or forbidden by God and thus have been instituted by the
supreme Majesty, are 'musts.' Nevertheless, no one should be dragged to them or away from them by the hair, for I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club."
— Martin Luther

"Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"There is indeed a certain sense of gratification when we do a good deed that gives us inward satisfaction, and a generous pride that accompanies a good conscience…These testimonies of a good conscience are pleasant; and such a natural pleasure is very beneficial to us; it is the only payment that can never fail. “On Repentance”"
— Montaigne

"je dormis et rêvai que la vie n'était que joie. je m'éveillai et vis que la vie était service. je servis et vis que le service était joie
"
— Kahlil Gibrán

"I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At least they were getting paid. I was working forty feet above the ground, breathing in sulfur fumes from Satan's vomitorium, for free.

Character building, my father said.

Mandatory community service, the judge said. Court-ordered restitution for the Foul Deed. He nailed me with the bill for the damage I had done, which meant I had to sell my car and bust my hump at a landscaping company all summer. Oh, and he gave me six months of meetings with a probation officer who thought I was a waste of human flesh.

Still, it was better than jail.

I pushed the mop back and forth, trying to coat the seams evenly. We didn't want any rain getting into the building and destroying the classrooms. Didn't want to hurt the school. No, sir, we sure didn't."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Twisted)

"Service is the very purpose of life. It is the rent we pay for living on the planet. "
— Marion Wright Edelman

""The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country"
"
— George S. Patton Jr.

"The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others."
— Robert Baden-Powell

"We love those whom we serve (p. 26)"
— Richard Paul Evans (The Christmas Box Miracle : My Spiritual Journey of Destiny, Healing and Hope)

"On the Bigotry of Culture:
: it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing."
— José Ortega y Gasset (The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature)

"Make your customers comfortable and they will give you their lives."
— Paul Orfalea (Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America's Best Companies)

"We are not called upon to do all the good that is possible, but only that which we can do."
— Theodore Guerinin

"We are not called upon to do all the good that is possible, but only that which we can do."
— Theodore Guerin (Mother Theodore Guerin: Journals and Letters)