Benevolent

bɪˈnɛvələnt

adjective

well meaning and kindly

The word 'benevolent' comes from the Latin word 'benevolens', which means 'well-wishing'. It is often used to describe someone who is actively concerned for the well-being of others and acts in a charitable and generous manner.

His face was long, with a high forehead, he had deep darkling eyes, hard to fathom, though the look that they now bore was grave and benevolent, and a little weary.

J. R. R. Tolkien

The Two Towers

Old Seldon speaking his benevolent words that were so shatteringly wrong – the jumbled confusion – Indbur, with his mayoral costume incongruously bright about his pinched, unconscious face – the frightened crowds gathering quickly, waiting noiselessly for the inevitable word of surrender – the young man, Toran, disappearing out of a side door with the Mule’s clown dangling over his shoulder.

Asimov, Isaac

Foundation 2 - Foundation and Empire

Unfortunately an only son, (for many years an only child) I was spoilt by my parents, who though good themselves, (my father particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice

Count yourselves fortunate, for Yezzan is a kindly and benevolent master.

George R. R. Martin

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five

Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons, churches, and books—no one and nothing met with a refusal from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have given everything away.

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

She raises her hand to the smiling, benevolent attendant and says: Hung-huh-Guth.

King, Stephen

The Stand

In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man, and a benevolent old lady, Oliver’s troubles would have been shortened by the very same process which had put an end to his mother’s; in other words, he would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the king’s highway.

Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist

To teach man the future of humanity as his will, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of “history” (the folly of the “greatest number” is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

As the sun nears the horizon, its benevolent yellow begins to deepen, to become infected, until it glares an angry inflamed orange.

Stephen King

'Salem's Lot

very benevolent countenance then; but how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, it’s grinding the face of the poor.

Herman Melville

Moby Dick

And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man.

Thomas Paine

The Age of Reason

“Calm yourself, my friend,” said the count, with the smile which he made at will either terrible or benevolent, and which now expressed only the kindliest feeling; “I am not an inspector, but a traveller, brought here by a curiosity he half repents of, since he causes you to lose your time.” “Ah, my time is not valuable,” replied the man with a melancholy smile.

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

Hold me up, Jo; for upon my life it’s one too many for me,” returned Laurie, regarding the infants with the air of a big, benevolent Newfoundland looking at a pair of infantile kittens.

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women

VII Adventures of the Letter U Delivered Over to Conjectures Isolation, detachment, from everything, pride, independence, the taste of nature, the absence of daily and material activity, the life within himself, the secret conflicts of chastity, a benevolent ecstasy towards all creation, had prepared Marius for this possession which is called passion.

Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality, The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face, The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges broad at the back-top, The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens, The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face, The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or despised face, The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children, The face of an amour, the face of veneration, The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock, The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face, A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper, A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass

Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

But from a modern standpoint, semen is just a carrier of information -- both benevolent sperm and malevolent viruses.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

He’d get Paul released; he’d do things, vague but highly benevolent things, for Zilla; he’d be as generous as his friend Seneca Doane.

Sinclair Lewis

Babbitt

The Tyrant would seem a benevolent father figure by comparison with what you were about to create!” It was all true, of course, but in a Bene Gesserit context, and it helped little with what he was commanded to do to the Duncan Idaho ghola—creating mental and physical agony in an almost helpless victim.

Frank Herbert

Heretics of Dune

You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

Try how the life of the good man suits thee, the life of him who is satisfied with his portion out of the whole, and satisfied with his own just acts and benevolent disposition.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

Straight to the guardian of the bristly kind He thus began, benevolent of mind: "What guest is he, of such majestic air?

Homer

The Odyssey

Count yourselves fortunate, for Yezzan is a kindly and benevolent master.

Martin, George, R. R.

A Dance With Dragons

They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent.

G. K. Chesterton

The Innocence of Father Brown

And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousandfold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times.

Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha

And Raphael now to Adam’s doubt proposed Benevolent and facile thus replied: “To ask or search I blame thee not; for heaven Is as the Book of God before thee set, Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years: This to attain, whether heaven move or Earth Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest From Man or Angel the great Architect Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought Rather admire.

John Milton

Paradise Lost

In short, Sancho, either you must be whipped by yourself, or they must whip you, or you shan’t be governor.” “Señor,” said Sancho, “won’t two days’ grace be given me in which to consider what is best for me?” “No, certainly not,” said Merlin; “here, this minute, and on the spot, the matter must be settled; either Dulcinea will return to the cave of Montesinos and to her former condition of peasant wench, or else in her present form shall be carried to the Elysian fields, where she will remain waiting until the number of stripes is completed.” “Now then, Sancho!” said the duchess, “show courage, and gratitude for your master Don Quixote’s bread that you have eaten; we are all bound to oblige and please him for his benevolent disposition and lofty chivalry.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote

He vowed to be more tolerant and benevolent, but when he ducked inside his tent with his friendlier attitude a great blaze was roaring in the fireplace, and he gasped in horrified amazement.

Heller, Joseph

Catch-22

In the chapter of the Theory of Moral Sentiments on the systems of philosophy which make virtue consist in benevolence, he says that Hutcheson believed that it was benevolence only which could stamp upon any action the character of virtue: the most benevolent action was that which aimed at the good of the largest number of people, and self-love was a principle which could never be virtuous, though it was innocent when it had no other effect than to make the individual take care of his own happiness.

Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations