“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.”
The Letter to the Ephesians, c. 62 AD · early Christian letter
Chapter 6
On Kindness
“The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh.”
The Book of Proverbs, c. 400 BC · Hebrew wisdom literature
“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.”
The Gospel of Luke, c. 85 AD · the Sermon on the Plain
“Consider that a good disposition is invincible if it be genuine, and not an affected smile and acting a part.”
Marcus Aurelius, c. 180 AD · Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher
“That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love.”
William Wordsworth, 1798 · English poet
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, I shall not live in vain.”
Emily Dickinson, 1890 · American poet
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
George Eliot, 1872 · English novelist, pen name of Mary Ann Evans
“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”
Jane Addams, 1892 · American social reformer, founder of Hull House
Pooling twenty-seven studies with about four thousand participants, researchers found that performing acts of kindness reliably lifted the wellbeing of the person doing the kindness.
Oliver Curry and colleagues, 2018 · systematic review and meta-analysis of kindness experiments
People handed money and told to spend it on someone else ended the day happier than people told to spend the same amount on themselves.
Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton, 2008 · field experiment on prosocial spending
Children aged nine to eleven asked to perform three kind acts a week for a month gained not only in wellbeing but in how much their classmates wanted to be near them.
Kristin Layous and colleagues, 2012 · classroom experiment in nineteen Vancouver classrooms
Across 201 studies and nearly two hundred thousand people, kindness toward others was linked to wellbeing, and the link was strongest for the deeper kind of wellbeing, meaning and purpose rather than pleasure.
Bryant Hui and colleagues, 2020 · meta-analysis of prosociality and wellbeing
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