goodness Quotes

“If you are good, life is good.”

“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world”

“The sincere wish to be good is half the battle.”

“A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”

“I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. ”

“Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to change, only it must be a complete change.”

“It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.”

“Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

“You’d find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair... People who haven’t red hair don’t know what trouble is.”

“We ought always to try to influence other people for good.”

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“If it is a good morning, which I doubt.”

“So fair and foul a day I have not seen.”

“You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don’t know which to follow.”

″‘Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,’ cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.”

“Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good in me.”

“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self.”

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

“You will be good to me, won’t you? . . . Because we’re going to have a strange life.”

“You’re either for the Führer or against him—and I can see that you’re against him. You always have been.”

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

“A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”

I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I was merciful.

“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”

″‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!‘”

“‘There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. . . . And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!‘”

“‘There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!‘”

“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

“I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.”

“How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men--even if there are monsters in it.”

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.

“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”

“Oh my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much good...what account have I to give for my long years?”

“It is good people who make good places.”

“If a thing is right it can be done, and if it is wrong it can be done without; and a good man will find a way.”

She is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil. All we can do is carry her to the castle of the Wicked Witch and leave her there.

“If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.”

“For which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?”

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

“Invincible: abasht the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Vertue in her shape how lovly, saw, and pin’d His loss.”

“The answer is good things only happen to you if you’re good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender.”

“What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s.”

“Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air.”

That which is actually good never alters.

“But I really believe, and Daddy really believes, that there are more good people on this earth than bad people, and the good people watch out for each other and take care of each other.”

“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”

“How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ‘em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ‘em.”

“You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don’t think he knows.”

“I can. And there’s your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs.”

“There is no book so bad but it has something good in it.”

“We don’t need to be good. But let’s try to be fair.”

“You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”

“A person’s reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself.”

“Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous, and full of love.”

But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in ’t!”

“You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. ‘Everyone has something good about them.’ She said. ‘You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.‘”

“But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”

“If I was such a good dog, why was I being abandoned by my owner?”

“You’re a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it.”

“I had fulfilled my purpose and there was no reason for me to be a dog anymore. So whether it happened this summer or the next didn’t matter. Ethan, loving Ethan, was my ultimate purpose, and I had done it as well as I could. I was a good dog.”

“He crept over to the doghouse and arranged the blanket on the thin pad inside. I climbed in next to him—we both had two feet sticking out the door. I put my head on his chest, sighing, while he stroked my ears. ‘Good dog, Bailey,’ he murmured.”

“People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don’t deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things”

“If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

“As to moral philosophy, they have the same disputes among them as we have here. They examine what are properly good, both for the body and the mind; and whether any outward thing can be called truly good, or if that term belong only to the endowments of the soul.”

“This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful?”

“As for life therefore, and death, honour and dishonour, labour and pleasure, riches and poverty, all these things happen unto men indeed, both good and bad, equally; but as things which of themselves are neither good nor bad; because of themselves, neither shameful nor praiseworthy.”

“In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things—perhaps even in being essentially identical with them.”

“TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.”

“The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.”

″ ‘She would of been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’ ”

“The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.”

“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”

“Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others.”

“And then it was not a toy lion, but a real lion, The Real Lion, just as she had seen him on the mountain beyond the world’s end. And a smell of all sweet-smelling things there are filled the room. But there was some trouble in Jill’s mind, though she could not think what it was... The Lion told her to repeat the signs, and she found that she had forgotten them all. At that, a great horror came over her.”

″‘Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.‘”

“Nobody, least of all Jadis, could have missed at that range. The bar struck the Lion fair between the eyes. It glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass. The Lion came on. Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before, you could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit. Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.”

“All you got from him is your looks and your size. You’ve got your mother’s heart, and that’s what counts.”

“Men aren’t naturally good; but girls are.”

“Seek the goodness, become the goodness.”

“He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”

“Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All.”

“No one who is good can ever be ugly.”

“When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil. ”

“Stranger fiends hide here in human guise than reside in the valleys of Hell. But goodness, kindness and love arise in the heart of the poor beast, as well.”

“PAULINA Good queen, my lord, Good queen; I say good queen; And would by combat make her good, so were I A man, the worst about you.”

“I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.”

“What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions…”

“But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into the cause of goodness, so why the other shop? If lewdies are good that’s because they like it, and I wouldn’t ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop.”

“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”

“There is absolutely nothing to take the place of a good man.”

“Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one.”

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

“Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.”

“I always consider myself personally one of seven billion human beings. Nothing special. So, on that level, I have tried to make people aware that the ultimate source of happiness is simply a healthy body and a warm heart.”

“And Hattie said, ‘Goodness gracious me! I can see a nose, two eyes, two ears, a body, four legs, and a tail in the bushes! It’s a fox! It is a fox!’ And she flew very quickly into a nearby tree.”

“You are my Lord, because You have no need of my goodness.”

“You are now responsible for your own sins, but also for your own goodness. Remember what the Talmud teaches: Life is but a river. It has no beginning, no middle, no end. All we are, all we are worth, is what we do while we float upon it—how we treat our fellow man. Remember this, and a good man you will be.”

“I think you must be the best person in the world...you are always doing good, aren’t you? -- and thinking about other people. Dearest says that is the best kind of goodness; not to think about yourself, but to think about other people. That is just the way you are, isn’t it?”

“The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.”

“Ken, you know the world is full of unpleasant things. Pain and operations and sickness and discomfort. You mustn’t mind. That’s just the way life is. Besides all that, there is health and goodness and soundness and fun and happiness, too, for horses as well as boys- much more of the good things then the bad- ”

“Klara, do you think once we’re in the window, we’ll receive so much goodness we’ll never get short again?”

“My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not had much time for friendships; but since I have been summoned to here by my friend John Seward I have known so many good people and seen such nobility that I feel more than ever—and it has grown with my advancing years— the loneliness of my life.

“I think you will prosper, for the sincere wish to be good is half the battle.”

“Only, Catherine, do me this justice: believe that if I might be as sweet, and as kind, and as good as you are, I would be; as willingly, and more so, than as happy and as healthy. And believe that your kindness has made me love you deeper than if I deserved your love”

“you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense... and perfection.”