Quotes about goodness

page 11

“No good friends, no bad friends; only people you want, need to be with. People who build their houses in your heart.”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

“I while yet a youth wrote in a quite large volume three books of magical things, which I calledin which whatever was then erroneous because of my curious youth, now, more cautious, I wish to retract by this recantation, for formerly I spent much time and goods on these vanities.”

“What is magic?
There is the wizard's explanation… wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.”

“Good people drink good beer.”

“… the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.”

“There's only one very good life and that's the life you know you want and you make it yourself.”

“I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger.
'No, and if he were I would burn my library.”

“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.”

“Whut's the plan, Rob?" said one of them.
"Okay, lads, this is what we'll do. As soon as we see somethin', we'll attack it. Right?"
This caused a cheer.
"Ach, 'tis a good plan," said Daft Wullie.”

“A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.”

“Well, she's not responding to my advances," he observed more brightly than he felt, "so she must be dead."
"Or she's a woman of good taste and sense.”

“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”

“When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really truly gone?”

“A joke is a good camouflage. Next best comes sentiment… But the best camouflage of all - in my opinion - is the plain and simple truth. Because nobody ever believes it.”

“In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.”

“No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.”

“This wasn't food - it was what food became if it had been good and gone to food heaven.”

“The Bible has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”

“That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.”

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”

“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

“You can take pride in yourself without comparing yourself to anybody else. If you run your race and be the best that you can be, then you can feel good about yourself.”

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”

“90% of the work in this country is done
by people who don't feel good".”

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”

“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

“It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

“I don't aspire to be a good man. I aspire to be a whole man.”

“Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like meet the Dish of the Day?"

…

“Good evening,” it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?”

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened?”

“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader ("Good Readers and Good Writers", p. 3).”

“If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good.”

“There is a way to be good again.”

“Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”

“Oh, well… up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way.”

“Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.”

“Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life”

“You try to be good, to be good and loving and nice and not hard, not tough, a sweet nice girl, not ugly, not full of ugliness, but people make it impossible.”

“You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for.”

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

“Good is not always God's will, but God's will is always good.”

“There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.”

“Ladies and gentlemen: War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”

“I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”

“If it isn't good, let it die. If it doesn't die, make it good.”

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

“When one has not had a good father, one must create one.”

“The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.”

“What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.”

“Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.”

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

“One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.”

“Val: Why do you go out there?
Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice.
Val: What advice do they give?
Sandra: Just one word- live!”

“I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It's impossible not
to remember wild an want it back.”

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”

“How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.”

“I hate cats."
Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant.
"I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.”

“My good friend the Governor said I could settle down at Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few weeks. The street of that port is about a mile and a half long. It has the slaughterhouse at one end and the graveyard at the other. The chief distraction is to walk from the slaughterhouse to the graveyard. For a change one may walk from the graveyard to the slaughterhouse.”

“Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.”

“It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

“The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run.”

“I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.
- Blanche Scene II”

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hours. But it's those hours that make us what we are.”

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

“I know whom we must fight… it is the Church. For all its history, it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.”

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

“Fairy Song
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.
Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies,—
Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!
‘Mong the blossoms white and red—
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this fresh pomegranate bough.
See me! ’tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man’s ill.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu—I fly—adieu!
I vanish in the heaven’s blue,—
Adieu, adieu!”

“No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.”

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris"
"Where do bad Americans go?"
"They stay in America”

“Don't try to be original; just try to be good.”

“Seek always to do some good, somewhere… Even if it's a little thing, so something for those that need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.”

“The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”

“Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.”

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”

“Good with out evil is like light with out darkness which in turn is like righteousness whith out hope.”

“There are a large number of people in the room, but one is unaware of them. They are in the books. At times they move among the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”

“To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain.”

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”

“Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.”

“Patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.”

“We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.”

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”

“Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.”

“I was trying to prove to them and to myself that I was still who I had always been. I was beautiful, if fat. I was smart, if loud. I was good, if ruined.”

“The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.”

“In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.”

“The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew.”

“She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn't going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.”

“Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.”

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

“A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.”

“Happiness is good health and a bad memory.”

“When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.”