Goodness Quotes

Nothing can be made of nothing; he who has laid up no material can produce no combination.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Though language forms the preacher, 'Tis good works make the man.

Eliza Cook

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.

Mahatma Gandhi

One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Everyone whose deeds are more than his wisdom, his wisdom endures; and everyone whose wisdom is more than his deeds, his wisdom does not endure.

The Talmud

On the other hand, all those doubts which I had felt before I entered the cottage as to whether these creatures were friend of foe, and whether Ransom were a pioneer or a dupe, had for the moment vanished. My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that he creature was what we called 'good', but I wasn't sure whether I liked 'goodness' so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

C.S. Lewis

A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.

Emily Bronte

What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed -- and not for pay? Absurd -- or insincere?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Bo

Only happy people can learn. Only happy people can teach. Our religion should put a sparkle in our eyes and a tone in our voice, and a spring in our step that bears witness of our faith and confidence in the goodness of God.

Source Unknown

Look for no reward in goodness but goodness itself.

Source Unknown

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Marcus Aurelius

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.

Mikhail Bakunin

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

James Russell Lowell

That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.

Jean de la Bruyere

Every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage;...true success follows every right step.

Orison Swett Marden

What I don't understand about you is this, she said. You hold to your old belief in goodness with a tenacity that is virtually unshakable. Yet you are so good at being what you are! You hunt your victims like a dark angel. You kill ruthlessly. You feast all the night long on victims when you choose.So? I looked at her coldly. I don't know how to be bad at being bad.She laughed. I was a good marksman when I was a young man, I said, a good actor on the stage. And now I am a good vampire. So much for our understanding of the word 'good.'

Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

Talking much is a sign of vanity, for the one who is lavish with words is cheap in deeds.

Sir Walter Raleigh

In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful --in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason --and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes.

Plato