"THE BEST WAY TO GIVE IS TO GIVE MUCH, OFTEN, and anonymously.  Don't speak about your giving, and don't think when you give.  Just give, both with your means and with your heart.  And give spontaneously.  Real charity can happen at any moment in life.  I came to this country from France with a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket, and I started working as a dishwasher in a Houston hotel in 1964.  At one point, I had to buy a car, and a coworker -- someone I barely knew -- offered to cosign for the loan.  Was this charity?  I don't think so, because he didn't give me anything material.  Instead, he gave me his confidence, which was the greatest gift in the world.  If you have the resources to give away a lot of money, then by all means do so.  But don't underestimate the value of personal charity.

I've always operated on the principle that your first real dollar isn't the first dollar that you earn.  Your first real dollar is the one that you give away.  Since I've had the good fortune to become successful in America, I want to depart with no more than the $200 that I had in my pocket when I arrived here.  By the time I die, I want to have given back to this country just about everything that I've received here.  I have a family, so I have to give something to them, but I'm not going to spoil them for generations.  They must build something of their own.  Once I've fulfilled my responsibility to them, I'll give the rest back.  The world is your larger family.  You have a responsibility to provide for its future as well.

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Michel Roux took an unknown Swedish vodka -- Absolut -- and turned its squat, short-necked bottle into an American icon.  This year, he founded his own company, Crillon Importers, which distributes imported products, including such fanciful concoctions as Elisir du Dr Roux, a 94-proof herbal liqueur that is said to have aphrodisiac qualities, and Le Vin du Coeur, a wine that features same-sex couples on two of its three labels.