Quotes

• Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. (Horace Mann)
• Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
• Do good and care not to whom. (Italian proverb)
• 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 your verb agree to serve...You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
• 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.)
• The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. (Hadia Bejar)
• He who gives when he is asked has waited too long. (Sunshine Magazine)
• In about the same degree as you are helpful, you will be happy. (Karl Reiland)
• It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. (Mother Teresa)
• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. (Margaret Mead)
• Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something.
• Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means. (Leo Buscaglia)
• A pessimist, they say, sees a glass of water as being half empty; an optimist sees the same glass as half full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty. (G. Donald Gale)
• Service is never a simple act; its about sacrifice for others and about accomplishment for ourselves, about reaching out, one person to another, about all our choices gathered together as a country to reach across all our divides. (former President George Bush)
• Service is what life is all about. (Marian Wright Edelman)
• Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even. (Daniel Berrigan)
• Stop me before I volunteer again!
• Those who can...do. Those who can do more...volunteer.
• Time spent as a volunteer is not deducted from one's lifespan!
• Volunteers are angels in disguise!
• Volunteers are love in motion!
• Volunteers are special folks!
• Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart. (Elizabeth Andrew)
• Volunteers don't get paid...not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless!
• Volunteers take the time to lend a helping hand.
• We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. (Sir Winston Churchill)
• We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make. (Edelman, Marion Wright)
• When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching. (Buliver)
• Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him. (Albert Schweitzer)
• You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. (Kahlil Gibran)
• Your generosity of love and time touch all who know you!

Volunteers

(from Ann Landers)

Many will be shocked to find,
When the day of judgment nears,
That there's a special place in heaven
Set aside for volunteers.

Furnished with big recliners,
Satin couches and footstools,
Where there are no committee chairmen,
No yard sales or rest area coffee to serve,
No library duty or bulletin assembly,
There will be nothing to print and staple,
Not one thing to fold and mail,

Telephone lists will be outlawed.
But a finger snap will bring
cool drinks and gourmet dinners
And rare treats fit for a king.

You ask, "Who'll serve these privileged few
And work for all they're worth?"
Why, all those who reaped the benefits,
And not once volunteered on Earth.

So Long, Volunteers

(Erma Bombeck)

I had a dream the other night that every volunteer in this land had set sail for another country. I stood smiling on the pier, shouting, "Good-by, phone committees, Good-by, disease-of-the-month. No more getting out the vote. No more playground duty, bake sales and three-hour meetings."
As the boat got smaller, I reflected: "Serves them right, that bunch of yes people. All they had to do was to put their tongues firmly against the roof of their mouths and make an "o" sound--no. It would certainly have spared them a lot of grief. Oh, well, who needs them?'
The hospital was quiet as I passed it. The reception desk was vacant. Rooms were devoid of books, flowers and voices. The children's wing held no clowns, no laughter.
The home for the aged was like a tomb. The blind listened for a voice that never came. The infirm were imprisoned on wheelchairs that never moved. Food grew cold on trays that would never reach the hungry.
The social agencies had closed their doors--unable to implement their programs of scouting, recreation, and drug control; unable to help the retarded, crippled, lonely and abandoned. Health agencies had signs in their windows: "Cures for cancer, birth defects, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, etc., have been canceled because of lack of interest."
The schools were strangely quiet, with no field trips and no volunteer classroom aides. Symphony Halls and the museums that had been built and stocked by volunteers were dark and would remain that way.
The flowers on church altars withered and died. Children in day nurseries lifted their arms, but there was no one to hold them in love. Alcoholics cried out in despair, but not one answered. The poor had no recourse for health care or legal aid.
I fought in my sleep to regain a glimpse of the ship of volunteers just one more time. It was to be my last glimpse of a decent civilization.