Goodness Quotes - Page 10

• A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is set above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sweet, Lying, Heart

  Address in Divinity College, americanliterature.com. July 15, 1838.

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• Who would ever care to do brave deed,
  Or strive in virtue others to excel,
  If none should yield him his deserved meed
  Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
  For if good were not praised more than ill,
  None would choose goodness of his own free will.

  Edmund Spenser

  Yield, Brave, Spurs

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• Do not disregard the accumulation of goodness, saying, 'This will come to nothing.' By the gradual falling of raindrops, a jar is filled.

  Gautama Buddha

  Fall, Raindrops, Jars

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• Listen to people and treat people as you find them.
  There's an inherent goodness in most people.
  Don't pre-judge people - that was me Mam's advice anyway.

  Sean Bean

  People, Judging, Advice

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• And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money...and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a Big Brother or Sister...You want to do well, but if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

  Arthur Balfour

  Brother, Soup Kitchens, Giving

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• Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, love and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Mean, Angel, Night

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1867). “The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition”, p.348

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• Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use—that is our good use—of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?

  Socrates

  Wise, Mean, Men

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• Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.

  William Saroyan

  Heart, Shining, Sorrow

  Eugene O'Neill, Maxwell Anderson, Sidney Coe Howard, DuBose Heyward, Elmer Rice (1988). “Famous American plays of the 1920s and the 1930s”

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• We are unconscious of most of our body's processes, thank goodness, because we'd screw it up if we weren't. The human body is so complex, with so many parts...a system which is far more complex than we can fully imagine. The idea that we are consciously care-taking such a large and mysterious system is ludicrous.

  Lynn Margulis

  Ideas, Environmental, Body

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• Plato stands for the union of truth and goodness in the supreme idea of God.

  James Mark Baldwin

  Plato, Ideas, Unions

  James Mark Baldwin (1913). “History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation”

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• I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.

  Petrarch

  And Love, Worst, Pursue

  "Il Canzoniere (Song Book)". Book by Petrarch (Sonnet CCXXV, Canzone XXI, "To Laura in Life"), circa 1351-1353.

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• No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Mistake, Greatness, Men

  Frederick William Robertson (1871). “Life, Letters, Lectures, and Addresses”, p.767

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• We may have an excellent ear for music, without being able to perform in any kind; we may judge well of poetry, without being poets, or possessing the least of a poetic vein; but we can have no tolerable notion of goodness without being tolerably good.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Judging, Veins, Ears

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• Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of the Gods subject always to the distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and that which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods of sense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so the myths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are only to those who can understand.

  Sallust

  Wise, Common, States

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• Evil is the voltage of good; the urge to goodness, without the potential of evil, is trivial.

  James Tiptree Jr.

  Evil, Voltage, Urges

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• When I was very young, I was disgracefully intolerant but when I passed the thirty mark I prided myself on having learned the beautiful lesson that all things were good, and equally good. That, however, was really laziness. Now, thank goodness, I've sorted out what matters and what doesn't. And I'm beginning to be intolerant again.

  Gladys Bronwyn Stern

  Beautiful, What Matters, Lessons

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• Let our Fathers and Grandfathers be valued for their Goodness, ourselves for our own.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Father, Grandfather, Fathers And Grandfathers

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, p.27, Nayika Publishing

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• The Christian life is a long and continual tendency of our hearts toward that eternal goodness which we desire on earth. All our happiness consists in thirsting for it. Now this thirst is prayer. Ever desire to approach your Creator, and you will never cease to pray. Do not think it necessary to pronounce many words.

  Francois Fenelon

  Christian, Prayer, Heart

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• So great was my joy in God that I took no heed of looking at the angels and the saints, because all their goodness and all their beauty was from Him and in Him.

  Angela of Foligno

  God, Angel, Joy

  Angela (of Foligno) (1909). “The Book of Divine Consolation of the Blessed Angela of Foligno”

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• The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. Happiness comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience.

  William B. Ogden

  Simple, Hands, Ingredients

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• The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Mean, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.307, Bantam Classics

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• The time is coming when all men will see that the gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, buta sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  God, Sweet, Men

  Address in Divinity College, Cambridge, americanliterature.com. July 15, 1838.

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