Benevolence. — Benevolence should also be included among the small, but innumerably frequent and hence extremely effective things to which science should pay more attention than it does to large, less frequent things; I mean those expressions of friendly sentiment in social interaction, that smile of the eyes, that shaking of hands, that comfortable pleasure with which almost all human actions are ordinarily entwined.  Every teacher, every official, adds this seasoning to what is duty for him; it is the continual activity of human nature, the waves of its light, as it were, in which everything grows; especially in the narrowest circle, within the family, life turns green and blossoms only by means of that benevolence.  Good-naturedness, friendliness, politeness of the heart, are the ever-flowing streams of the unegotistical drive and have worked more powerfully in building culture than those much more famed expressions of it that we call sympathy, compassion, and sacrifice.  But we tend to disparage them, and in face: there is not actually much that is unegotistical in them.  The sum of those smaller doses is nonetheless potent, their combined force is among the strongest of forces. — Likewise, we find much more happiness in the world than melancholy eyes see:  if we calculate correctly, that is, and do not forget all those moments of comfortable pleasure in which every day of every human life, even the most distressed one, is rich.

Nietzsche — Human, All Too Human