Philanthropy
Lopez supported a number of charitable causes in Newport. He purchased books for the Redwood Library and Athenaeum. He contributed lumber to help build the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (which later relocated to Providence and eventually became Brown University), and he donated land to establish Leicester Academy in Leicester, Massachusetts.
Lopez was a leading contributor who helped build the Touro Synagogue, and he was given the honor of laying one of its cornerstones.
During the American Revolution, Lopez harbored Jewish refugees in his Leicester home. Referring to those sheltered by Lopez, a friend wrote in jest that "your family at present are in a number only 99 and still there is room for one more".
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Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)