Hospitality Quotes

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

~ Anonymous

In the cherry blossom's shadethere's no such thingas a stranger.

~ Kobayashi Issa

There is no hospitality like understanding.

~ Vanna Bonta

Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen

Thanks to photography, some memories overstay their welcome.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Hospitality is the practice of God's welcome by reaching across difference to participate in God's actions bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis.

~ Letty M. Russell

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

You’re busy. You don’t have the skill set. Their problems are too much. Their life is a mess.Your life is a mess. You’re too impatient. You’re not kind enough. You don’t even like them.You have nothing to offer. What does it really matter?Turns out, in the end, it’s all that really matters.

~ Edie Wadsworth

After three days men grow weary, of a wench, a guest, and weather rainy.

~ Benjamin Franklin

the bleakest situations bring out the hospitality in all of us, but it's during the harshest we find out how strong we really are.

~ Evan Meekins

now the question we must ask is...what kind of _practices_ [theology] motivates, what kind of _gaze_ onto others, the guest, the new arrivant, it offers us to carry with us; _not_ who my neighbors are _but_ to whom I am being a neighbor.

~ Namsoon Kang

The danger of refusing to reflect upon the psychological dynamics of faith and belief is that what we feel to be self evidently true, for psychological reasons, might be, upon inspection, highly questionable, intellectually or morally. Too often, as we all know, the 'feeling of rightness' trumps sober reflection and moral discernment. Further, we are often unwilling to listen to others until we are, to some degree, psychologically open to persuasion. The Parable of the Sower comes to mind.

~ Richard Beck

In short, the Lord's Supper was the realization of new social and political arrangements, the embodiment of the social leveling seen in Jesus' ministry, most profoundly in his acts of table fellowship. Importantly, as we have seen, these new social arrangements could only be achieved if the emotions of social stratification were confronted, eliminated, or reinterpreted. In his body metaphor, Paul dramatically reframes these heretical emotions, the emotions of contempt, disgust, honor, and social presentability. Rather, than signaling exclusion and division - the natural expulsive impulse inherent in these emotions - Paul suggests that these emotions should signal just the opposite in the Kingdom of God: honor, care, and embrace.

~ Richard Beck

Soak blanket in gravy and make a delicious brick wrap. Serve in All Gravy Room at the Mandrake Hotel.

~ Christoph Fischer

A soul of hospitality and a heart of humanity is a house of love, peace, freedom, liberty and justice.

~ Auliq Ice

All these years! All this time with us -- have you learned nothing?!You only live by the grace of our clan's tenet of forgiveness!Your judgement is shit!Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without decency, neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai.

~ Rick Remender

Take care to keep open house : Because in this way some have had angels as their guests, without being conscious of it . Hebrews 13:2.

~ Hebrew Bibles

Jesus shows us that there’s never a change of mind unless there’s a change of heart, and there will never be a change of heart without a conversation between trusted friends.Halter, Hugh (2014-02-01). Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth (p. 167). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition.

~ Hugh Halter

Instead of practicing philoxenos, which means loving the stranger, we find many times that the church is xenophobic. We forget that Jesus, whom we claim to follow, was the ultimate lover of otherness in people. Even differences in religion didn't freak Jesus out when it came to loving people.

~ Holly Sprink

Jesus modeled true leadership as both personal and hospitable.

~ Adam Livecchi

I love like I’m thirsty. Can I offer you a tall glass of Sahara sand?


~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.

~ Vera Nazarian

Every night we stopped in a cabin where wood had been stacked, matches left, and canned goods laid out for the chance traveler. All the unknown host received in return was a scribbled note giving our thanks, any news we could think of, and our names. This whole system of northern hospitality was a gigantic chain, for while we were eating this man’s beans, he was undoubtedly farther up the trail, eating somebody else’s.

~ Benedict Freedman

What is ordinary to you maybe a desert of woeful newness to another.

~ Richard Llewellyn

There is great value in being able to say yes when people ask if there is anything they can do. By letting people pick herbs or slice bread instead of bringing a salad, you make your kitchen a universe in which you can give completely and ask for help. The more environments with that atmospheric makeup we can find or create, the better.

~ Tamar Adler

As a dinner guest I gratefully eat just about anything that's set before me, because graciousness among friends is dearer to me than any other agenda.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Give thanks to the earth for the hospitality and generosityShow gratitude for life, light and every little beauty.

~ Debasish Mridha

True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who 'have found the center of their lives in their own hearts'.

~ Kathleen Norris

When I am a good host, I can order the world precisely as I believe it ought to be. It is a world that I have created in my mind and in my own image, and it gladdens me profoundly to see it unfold without original sin, without expulsions and floods and disobedience and illness. When I am a good guest, I have returned to Eden, where everything I need is provided for me, including companionship and a benevolent deity at my shoulder serving me and protecting me. The concept of paradise may be backward-looking but the concept of heaven is anticipatory. Perhaps this is what heaven will be like? A great table of oak worn smooth with age and candle wax; a dimly lit room, a quartet of angels playing Sarah Vaughan in the corner; this blissful throb of quiet, intelligent conversation; bubbling pots and aromatic stews that no one seems to have worked to prepare; and you - you have nothing to worry about, not now, not here, not for all eternity. Leave it all behind at the threshold, forget everything, for here in heaven, you are my guest.

~ Jesse Browner

If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people – then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe, and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo.

~ Thomas Munro

I've always admired people who give accurate directions, and the tribe is small.

~ Pat Conroy

We don't practice hospitality to point other people to ourselves, our church, or even our beliefs. We practice hospitality to point people toward the ultimate welcome that God gives every person through Christ.

~ Holly Sprink

The light of love proper to faith can illumine the question of our own time-concerning truth. Truth, nowadays, is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid only to the life of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent but grows in respectful coexistences with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, because believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.

~ Pope Francis

We show hospitality to strangers not merely because they need it, but because we need it, too. The stranger at the door is the living symbol and memory that we are all strangers here. This is not our house, our table, our food, our lodging; this is God's house and table and food and lodging. We were pilgrims and wanderers, aliens and strangers, even enemies of God, but we, too, were welcomed into this place. To show hospitality to the stranger is, as Gordon Lathrop has observed, to say, We are beggars here together. Grace will surprise us both.

~ Thomas G. Long

A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God's grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God's love and welcome to us.

~ Christine Pohl

A couple you do not recognize - visitors, strangers - come to the door. How are you to view these people and what is your responsibility towards them? ... To assume that these visitors are really like you, that there are no real difference between you and them, and that the highest goal possible is that you and the other members of your congregation will become intimate friends with them and invite them into the private spaces of your life.

~ Thomas G. Long

Service is a promise that cannot be seen, touched, or felt through any of our external senses.

~ Jag Randhawa

Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.

~ Namsoon Kang

My path is full of petals–I have swept it for no others.My thatch gate has been closed–but opens now for you. It’s a long way to the market, I can offer you little– Yet here in my cottage there is old wine for our cups.

~ Du Fu