Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Grand Acts of Generosity")

June 29 - July 5, 2025 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: “Grand Acts of Generosity"

Opening Line of the Week

In their opening sentence, Smith and Davidson chose a word—paradoxical—that has captured people’s imaginations for centuries. And, after encapsulating the essence of their book in only three words, they continued in the opening paragraph:

“Those who give, receive back in turn. By spending ourselves for others’ well-being, we enhance our own standing. In letting go of some of what we own, we better secure our own lives. By giving ourselves away, we ourselves move toward flourishing. This is not only a philosophical or religious teaching; it is a sociological fact.”

For more than 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

On July 1, 1941, this legendary American dancer and choreographer was born on a farm in Portland, Indiana (she celebrates her 84th birthday this week). About her unusual first name, she once said: “I’ve always thought my creative life began the moment my mother named me.”

She began taking dance lessons as a young child and became deeply immersed in the dance world when, at age nine, she moved with her family to California. While still a high school student in San Bernadino, she trained at the Vera Lynn Dance Studio. In the 1960s, she went on to attend Barnard College, where she studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. After graduating from Barnard in 1963, she began to make a name for herself with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

From 1965 to the 1980s, her eponymously-named dance company (______ ______ Dance) became one of the era’s most innovative dance troupes, creatively blending ballet and modern dance with pop music. In 1973, when she set her “Deuce Coup” to music by the Beach Boys, she created the first “cross-over” ballet. Her later works were set to music by George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and other luminaries in the musical world. In 1988, she merged with the American Ballet Theatre, which went on to stage scores of her choreographed works.

In The Creative Habit (2003), she offered one of the most original observations I’ve ever seen on the subject of generosity:

Who is this person? (Answer below)

Have You Ever Experienced a Grand Act of Generosity?

In the lives of many people, there are highly specific moments when their worlds are abruptly and instantaneously transformed by an extraordinary act of generosity: a waitress being left a $10,000 tip from a customer; a family narrowly avoiding financial disaster when a crippling medical bill is suddenly and mysteriously paid; a dying patient given a new lease on life when a complete stranger decides to donate a kidney.

In this week’s Puzzler, our Mystery Woman captured the spirit of these kinds of gifts when she suggested that a grand act of generosity is an effective method for fortunate people to transfer some of their good luck to those who haven’t been so fortunate. Just think about it for a moment. When you help someone in a dramatic and substantial way, you are, in effect, making them a ticket winner in the lottery of life. But even more important, you’re also implicitly inviting them into a larger human community where people believe that amazing things become possible when the haves are willing to lend a helping hand to the have-nots.

I explored an aspect of this subject in a “Receiving by Giving” post I did several months ago, but the kind of giving we’ll be examining this week is in a league of its own. If you’re anywhere close to my age, you may remember the story of Eugene M. Lang, a New York millionaire who became an American folk hero in 1981 when he made an extremely generous offer to 61 sixth-graders who were graduating from East Harlem’s Public School 121, officially named John F. Kennedy Junior High School after JFK’s death in 1963.

Lang’s “offer” to these middle-school graduates was simple and straightforward: if you stay in school and go on to receive a high school diploma, I will pay your full college tuition. The event not only made all of the TV news broadcasts the next day, it launched the “I Have a Dream” Foundation, one of the most famous and successful efforts in the history of philanthropy. Lang’s actions were also a perfect example of what sociologists now call “prosocial contagion,” inspiring hundreds of similar initiatives all around the world. The story also had a compelling personal element.

When Lang stepped up to the podium to deliver his commencement address, he was on familiar ground. After all, he had graduated from the same school exactly fifty years earlier, in 1931. His original intention was to tell the students that he’d worked hard and made a lot of money, and if they followed his example, they’d likely be successful as well. But after looking out at the graduating class—composed almost entirely of black and Hispanic students—he completely abandoned his prepared remarks. He later said, “It dawned on me that the commencement banalities I planned were completely irrelevant.”

Now in a completely extemporaneous mode, Lang started off by telling students that one of his most memorable life experiences was attending Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” rally in Washington, D.C. And just as he was about to tell the students that they also needed to have a dream, a completely new thought emerged in his mind. As he put it later, at that exact moment, “I decided to tell them I’d give a scholarship to every member of the class admitted to a four-year college.” To emphasize his commitment, he put his right hand over his chest and said, “On my heart, your college is paid for.” Not surprisingly, his announcement was received with shrieks of delight, sustained applause, and more than a few joyful tears from students as well as parents.

When the initial results came in six years later, they were spectacular. Compared to an average high school graduation rate of around 50 percent for previous graduating glasses of Public School 121, 90% of the “Dreamers,” as they came to be called, received high school diplomas. And compared to a college attendance rate of around 10% in previous classes, 50% of them went on to attend college—and some to fabulous later careers that would’ve almost certainly never happened without Lang transferring some of his good luck to them.

Eugene M. Lang with a visiting group of the Class of ’81 graduates of Public School 121 in 1985

The Class of ’81 was the first class of “Dreamers,” but their numbers grew dramatically over the years. By 2017, when Lang died at age 98, more than 16,000 students nationwide had benefited from his “I Have a Dream” Foundation. His spur-of-the-moment decision, made more than a quarter of a century earlier, had become a truly grand act of generosity.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been the recipient of a grand act of generosity, but I was fortunate to have had such an experience a few years ago. In early January of 2019, I had a brainstorm about writing a new book that I wanted to bring out in the fall. Fully aware of the extremely short timeline, I quickly wrote a “time-sensitive” book proposal and submitted it to a half-dozen publishers. By the end of February, all of them had rejected the proposal, and I was about to completely scrap the project.

Then, by sheer coincidence, I had a telephone chat with a long-time subscriber about an idea he was working on. As the conversation was ending, he thanked me for my help and casually inquired, “So, how are things going in your life?”

After I described my recent troubles, he said, “If you can’t find a publisher, why not publish it yourself? Everybody seems to be doing that these days.” I told him that I’d considered the idea, but wasn’t prepared to spend the kind of money it would take to produce a high-quality, self-published book. When he asked, “How much would something like that cost?” I replied, “Well, to do it right, I’d say about ten grand.”

I was flabbergasted by his reply: “How about if I send you a check for $10,000 so you can get the job done?” It took us about two minutes to work out the details, but three days later, his check arrived in my mailbox—and six months later Deconstructing Trump: The Trump Phenomenon Through the Lens of Quotation History was published. The entire effort would never have happened if not for the remarkable generosity of a subscriber who has since become a dear friend.

This week, think about any grand acts of generosity that have been extended to you over the years—and the impact they’ve had on your life. Also give some thought to how many times you’ve extended similar acts of generosity to others. As you approach the subject, let your thinking be stimulated by this week’s selection of quotations on the theme:

• It wasn’t that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route. — Saul Bellow

• Generosity makes at least two people feel good. — Karen Casey

• That’s what I consider true generosity. You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. — Simone de Beauvoir

• Being generous…often consists of simply extending a hand. That’s hard to do if you are grasping tightly to your hand, your rightness, your belief system, your superiority, your assumptions about others, your definition of normal. — Patti Digh

• Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness. — Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

• People who think they’re generous to a fault usually think that’s their only fault. — Sydney J. Harris

• Generosity with strings is not generosity: it is a deal. — Marya Mannes

• We’d all like a reputation for generosity and we’d all like to buy it cheap. — Mignon McLaughlin

• Be generous! Give to those whom you love; give to those who love you; give to the fortunate; give to the unfortunate; yes—give especially to those to whom you don’t want to give. — W. Clement Stone

• ’Tis a curious fact that a generous act/Brings leisure and luck to a day. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

For source information on these quotations, and more observations on the theme of GENEROSITY, go here.

Cartoons of the Week:

Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:

Twyla Tharp (her company was named “Twyla Tharp Dance”)

Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:

Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “Credos.”

Mardy Grothe

Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com

Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note