Quotes about good
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Thomas Hardy photo

“Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: The Personal Notebooks Of Thomas Hardy

Michael Ende photo
Dave Eggers photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Henry Fielding photo
Derek Landy photo
Ella Wheeler Wilcox photo

“I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Optimism
Poetry quotes, Poems of Pleasure (1900)
Context: I find a rapture linked with each despair,
Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.

Mark Twain photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett photo

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

Source: Snuff

Oscar Wilde photo

“It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be ugly.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Joseph Murphy photo
Cheryl Strayed photo
David Almond photo
René Descartes photo

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Variant: It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
Source: Discourse on Method

Morihei Ueshiba photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: The Devil's Web

Susan Sontag photo

“Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Henry David Thoreau photo
Padre Pio photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: Tears and Saints (1937)

Terry Pratchett photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Henry James photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Terence McKenna photo

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

LSD - Terence Mckenna - The Purpose Of Psychedelics http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27759640
Context: My notion of what the psychedelic experience is, for us, that we each must become like fishermen, and go out on to the dark ocean of mind, and let our nets down into that sea. And what you're after is not some behemoth, that will tear through your nets, follow them and drag you in your little boat, you know, into the abyss, nor are what we're looking for a bunch of sardines that can slip through your net and disappear. Ideas like, "Have you ever noticed that your little finger exactly fits your nostril?", and stuff like that. What we are looking for are middle-size ideas, that are not so small that they are trivial, and not so large that they're incomprehensible. Middle-size ideas we can wrestle into our boat and take back to the folks on shore, and have fish dinner. And every one of us when we go into the psychedelic state, this is what we should be looking for. It's not for your elucidation, it's not part of your self-directed psychotherapy. You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is in danger by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it's really all about.

Thomas à Kempis photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Thor Heyerdahl photo
Lemmy Kilmister photo

“My cat is not insane, she's just a really good actress.”

Source: Untamed

Dilgo Khyentse photo
Christopher Isherwood photo
Louis Sachar photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Many a man fails to become a thinker only because his memory is too good.”

Mancher wird nur deshalb kein Denker, weil sein Gedächtnis zu gut ist.
II.122
Human, All Too Human (1878)

Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Dilgo Khyentse photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Words on being presented with a Bible, as reported in the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle (8 September 1864)
1860s

Zadie Smith photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“Yes, if you happen to be interested in philosophy and good at it, but not otherwise – but so does bricklaying. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

When asked "Does philosophy contribute to happiness?" (SHM 76), as quoted in The quotable Bertrand Russell (1993), p. 149
Attributed from posthumous publications

Marcus Aurelius photo

“What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.”

VI, 54
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Frank Zappa photo

“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
Oscar Wilde photo
Walter Benjamin photo

“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: One Way Street And Other Writings

Tariq Ramadan photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Maria Shriver photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Auguste Escoffier photo
Isaac Bashevis Singer photo
Michael Ende photo
David Foster Wallace photo

“Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

An Interview by Larry McCaffery
Essays
Variant: I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“The thinking man must … oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. True manhood is too precious a spiritual good for us to surrender any part of it to thoughtlessness.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant : The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.
As quoted in Becoming Vegan : The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-based Diet (2000) by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina, p. 261
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 305; also in The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer (1950), p. 179

Dr. Seuss photo

“And when you're alone there's a very good chance
you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Elias Canetti photo

“Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

Source: The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit

Mark Twain photo
Carol Gilligan photo
Mark Twain photo
George Washington photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Mark Twain photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
Stephen King photo
William Shakespeare photo
Linda Sue Park photo
Jim Morrison photo

“I'll never wake up in a good mood again.
I'm tired of these stinky boots”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Source: An American Prayer

Jim Butcher photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism

Holly Black photo
Saul Bellow photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Frank Zappa photo

“Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
John Flanagan photo

“A good leader is someone who knows what he's bad at, and hires someone who's good at it to take care of it for him.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Battle for Skandia

Oswald Chambers photo
Augusten Burroughs photo
William Shakespeare photo