Our friends MindWell Leeds, the mental health website for people in Leeds, are celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week by exploring a different theme each day. Today is ‘be kind and generous to others’. We wanted to share our thoughts and some of our favourite quotes on kindness.

The greatest acts of kindness can go unnoticed. The smallest acts of kindness can mean the world. Kindness can be like wallpaper, present but in the background, or an event for all to see. It can be a memory, or a feeling. It could take the form of words, but kindness can also be silence. It could be telling someone you care about a truth that is hard to say and hard to hear. Kindness is unconditional.

During recent weeks we have been reminded that kindness is at the heart of who we are as people. Whether helping with the shopping for a neighbour, or keeping a safe distance from strangers as we walk past on the street, or giving someone the time that they need, just to listen, there is one thing holding it all together – kindness.

Here are some of our favourite kindness quotes from around the world.

  • “A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees” – Amelia Earhart
  • “Wherever there is a human being,there is an opportunity for kindness” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
  • “Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most underrated agent of human change.” – Bob Kerrey
  • “Kindness can become its motive. We are made kind by being kind” – Eric Hoffer
  • “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough” – Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  • “Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you” – Princess Diana
  • “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around” – Leo Buscaglia
  • “It’s ok if you’re having a wobble. Some days we will be on good form and other days we won’t. The secret is being kind to yourself as you dance between the two. We are all muddling through the best we can” – Chris Riley

For more information about mental health and the support we can offer you, call our advice line on 0113 380 4300 or visit www.carersleeds.org.uk