Goodness Quotes

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

~ Michel De Montaigne

wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state

~ Socrates

Oh! if the good hearts had the fat purses, how much better everything would go!

~ Victor Hugo

Our goodness is our wealth and when we close our eyes to the tragedies of the hard lives, we start losing our wealth!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Be good and you will be lonesome.

~ Mark Twain

Outwardly I was all confidence and openness, inwardly I was spiteful and lonely and unaware of how to relate to the world. I wanted so much to be good but only knew how to appear that way by being bad.

~ M.e. Thomas

Have you ever considered another type of loneliness; a good and healthy, happy loneliness?

~ Bryant Mcgill

Preaching vs Teaching:The difference between preaching and teaching: one makes you feel good, the other makes you grow.

~ T.f. Hodge

Be selfish and take good care of you first. When you are your best, you can best help others.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Any good is good enough.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Don’t react to any fuming argument.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Try not to be a man or woman of success, but rather a man or woman of inspiration. If you’re successful, they will flock to you for money or fame, but if you’re inspirational, they will flock to you because they love your soul and how you change theirs.

~ Shannon L. Alder

If you can't please yourself some of the time, how do you expect to please people all the time? Not everyone is going to appreciate you for your efforts and deeds.

~ Anthony Liccione

We are born, we grow up, we live our lives as best we can. If we are thoughtful we are good parents and good partners. If we are wise we strive for integrity and intimacy. If we are fortunate we discover love and joy. If we are able, we make the world a little better than we found it. That is all there is for any of us.

~ Robert B. Reich

And keep them thinking in terms of 'being good' as this is not an end so much as a means to something else —happiness, respect, self-esteem, etc… And whatever their true end is, take it away, and so goes their goodness.

~ Geoffrey Wood

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

~ Elizabeth Kostova

It's a shame there has to be a tragedy before the best in people will finally shine.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

When people are in need, you must be present. When people suffer, you must let them know you’re suffering with them.” “The good side of bad acts?” I say. “I would not say that from horror comes goodness. That would be giving horror too much credit. But goodness prevails in spite of horror.

~ Mark Matousek

All your troubles, struggles, pains and suffering is worth one good thing.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

If the only thing I did for the rest of my life was treat others kindly, file manila folders, and sit on the porch watching the grass grow it would be enough. It had to be. I did the math. The number of people who actually achieve a significant legacy is trifling compared to the vast number who go from birth to death living relatively unremarkable lives (at least on the surface). And maybe that wasn't the failure I'd been conditioned to believe. Maybe there was something to be said in praise of an outwardly unremarkable life. Maybe there were deep everyday forms of magic that had nothing to do with profound acomplishments or a Twitter feed that resonated down through the ages.

~ Clara Bensen

The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.

~ Anonymous

Uncommon success is found on the spiritual plane; you can't get there through common convention or following others. Hard work is not enough; many work slavishly-hard for little reward. Intelligence is insufficient; how many educated and brilliant people there are who fail utterly and completely. Goodness is not enough; how many meek and good souls are tilled into the earth like manure by demigods to fertilize their golden crops. There is something more — it is the unseen essential, and everyone has access to it.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. It's smell and it's color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The goodness of the world grew like moss in cracks, she thought. It grew, somehow, with hidden roots, nourished by something unseen.

~ K.j. Bishop

I've been a perfect lady my entire life, and somebody just tried to shoot me, anyway. Grandmother was wrong. Goodness is not its own reward.

~ Susan Andersen

Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

~ W.h. Auden

People won't admit it, they're too busy grabbing to see that the lights have fused. They can't see the darkness and the spider-face beyond and the great web of it all. That there's always this if you scratch at the surface of happiness and goodness.The black and the black and the black.

~ John Fowles

It takes darkness inside of a person to see it in others.

~ Amy Neftzger

You must always focus on and pursue the good, but when that darkness surges up from within, you need to know how to handle it, use it, and release it wisely, not just deny its presence or acceptability as you suppress it within you.

~ A.j. Darkholme

They constantly try to escapeFrom the darkness outside and withinBy dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.But the man that is shall shadowThe man that pretends to be.

~ T.s. Eliot

Evil exists in this world because it has its place. For had you never sat blindly through the darkness of night, your eyes wouldn't turn toward the sunrise to appreciate its warmth and illumination.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Grace is goodness.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Goodness is grace.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Grace is the seed of all goodness.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

All our good deeds cannot save us.We are saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ.

~ Lailah Giftyakita

When you call someone a sinner, make sure you have no sin in you, and if you say you are without sin, you are a righteous liar.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

~ Daniel Webster

Goodness was not a trait you acquired, it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.

~ Julius Lester