Goodness Quotes

Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.

Terry Pratchett

Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.

Plato

In goodness there are all kinds of wisdom.

Euripides

There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary things.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

Albert Einstein

To be doing good deeds is man's most glorious task.

Sophocles

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Oscar Wilde

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

Oscar Wilde

Be good and you will be lonesome.

Mark Twain

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:- I shall not fear anyone on Earth. - I shall fear only God. - I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. - I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. - I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.

Mahatma Gandhi

The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

Charles Lamb

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

Pau (Pablo) Casals

This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.

Martin Luther King Jr.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

George Orwell

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera

A good deed is never lost. He who sows courtesy, reaps friendship; he who plants kindness, gathers love; pleasure bestowed on a grateful mind was never sterile, but generally gratitude begets reward.

St. Basil

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Aristotle

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing; do something for those who have need of a man's help, something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers live here, too.

Albert Schweitzer

Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy