Quotes about goodness
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“Feeling insecure is good for you. It forces you to do something better, drives you to use all your talents.”

Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) American author, editor, publisher, and businesswoman

“No one should know his entire fate. It's too dangerous and too depressing. Just keep going, do your best, and hope it's good enough. That's all any of us can do.”

Rick Riordan book Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

Fate, Hope

“Otis barreled towards them empty-handed, before apparently realizing that a) he was empty-handed and b) charging towards a large body of water to fight a son of Poseidon was maybe not a good idea.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Idea, Water, Fight

“All good work requires self-revelation.”

Sidney Lumet (1924–2011) American director, producer and screenwriter

Source: Making Movies

“B. O. B. and I have a longtime understanding - when we're done with each other, we know exactly which one of us has been used, and it isn't me. Good night Gideon.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Understanding, Night

“He had the unlucky capacity many men have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to take any serious part in it.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Life, Men, Truth, Evil

“It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a tremendous cost.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Evil

“I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to be able to be in the moment and then step out of it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“We're artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don't we?”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

“You said I am a good man," he said. "But I am not that good a man. And I am--I am catastrophically in love with you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love

“Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand - …”

George Eliot book Silas Marner

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 18 (at page 163)

“I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Light, Night

“Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.”

David Levithan book Wide Awake

Source: Wide Awake

People, World, Thinking

“She had not yet decided whether to use her power for good… or for evil.”

Anne Taintor (1953) American artist

Evil

“But that too isn’t the way because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Context: Another way is to acquiesce and to give in, to resign yourself to the oppression. Some people do that. They discover the difficulties of the wilderness moving into the promised land, and they would rather go back to the despots of Egypt because it’s difficult to get in the promised land. And so they resign themselves to the fate of oppression; they somehow acquiesce to this thing. But that too isn’t the way because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

Way, Evil

“Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Source: ABC of Reading

Books, Understanding, Reading

“But, of course, it isn't really Good-bye, because the Forest will always be there… and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner

“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol 2

Truth, Error

“About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 1

Feeling

“… there are people who try to look as if they are doing a good and thorough job, and then there are the people who actually damn well do it, for its own sake.”

John D. MacDonald book Free Fall in Crimson

Source: Free Fall in Crimson

People

“Just because a person is beautiful doesn't mean there's no soul beneath. Doesn't mean that person hasn't suffered like everyone else, doesn't mean they don't hope to still be a good human being in an awful world.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

World, Beauty, Hope, Soul

“It didn't fit her ideas of who was bad, and who was good, and what was a happy ending, and what wasn't.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Idea, Happiness

“This isn't about guilt or innocence, he says. The dinosaurs weren't morally good or bad, but they're all dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

Dead

“Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Wisdom, Evil

“Somethings were meant to be and somethings were just meant to be good stories”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

Source: Enchanted

“So I'll do that, and I'll do my best and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Abhorsen

“You give too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Imagination

“There was something so best-musical-ever when people screamed and begged for mercy, and she could listen to a good musical all day.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Surrender

People, Music

“Only the good die young.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

“It's not easy having a good marriage--but I don't want easy. Easy doesn't make you grow. Easy doesn't make you think. I thank God everyday that I am married to a man who makes me think. That's my definition of true love.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Love, God, Marriage, Thinking

“Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Wisdom

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

Books, History, Literature, Thinking

“Good health, longevity, happiness, a loving family, self-reliance, fine friends … if you [have] five, you’re a rich man….”

Thomas J. Stanley (1944–2015) American businessman

Source: The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americas Wealthy

Love, Health, Family, Happiness

“If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: It's a Magical World: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection

“Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

People, Time, Parting

“A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

Personality

“Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that is merits being duplicated.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

Life

“We… believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.”

Irving Stone (1903–1989) American writer

Source: The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo

Art

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but though his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: 1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Education, Suicide, Universe, Time

“It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work… and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Truth, Knowledge, Memory

“Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

“What about King Tut’s tomb?” I protested.
“That boy king?” Zia rolled her eyes. “Boring. You should see some of the good tombs.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Boy

“It was so weird, because usually I was totally nervous talking to guys. But Eli was different. He made me want to say more, not less. Which was maybe not a good thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Guy

“you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Wind in the Door

Source: A Wind in the Door

“Simple is good.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Source: It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

“A way of life that keeps saying 'Around the next corner, above the next step,' works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Life, Way, Nature, Happiness

“I hope everyone that is reading this is having a really good day. And if you are not, just know that in every new minute that passes you have an opportunity to change that”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Hope, Change, Reading

“You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Source: Into the Woods

World

“They're puttin' music to AIDS germs--putting a drum machine behind them and a metronome beat and Ted Turner's colorizing them, goddamn it. These aren't even really people, man. It's a CIA plot to make you think malls are good. Don't you see?”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Sane Man (1989)
Context: Rick Astley? Have you seen this banal incubus at work? Boy, if this guy isn't heralding Satan's imminent approach to Earth, huh. "Don't ever wanna make you cry, never wanna make you sigh … never gonna break your heart" … oh, I wouldn't worry about that without a dick, buddy. You got a corn nut! You got a clit! You're not even a guy! You're an AIDS germ that got off a slide! They're puttin' music to AIDS germs, they're puttin' a drum machine behind them in a metronome beat and Ted Turner's colorizing 'em, God damn it! These aren't even people man! It's a CIA plot to make you think malls are good!! Don't ya see? (Imitates stereotypical American in a robotic manner) "But Bill, malls are good! Malls allow us to shop 365 days of the year at a 72 degree heat. That must be good."

People, Music, Color, Thinking

“Consolation

Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Source: New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001

“Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Sometimes quoted as "Nothing good ever dies."
Different Seasons (1982), Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
Source: The Shawshank Redemption

Hope, Hope

“Maybe he was a good a good whitecoat—like Jeb. And maybe the moon was made of cream cheese.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and—if you're not careful—those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Lightsong the Bold
Warbreaker (2009)

Books, Reading

“Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Thinking, Heart, Dead

“His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.”

Irvine Welsh (1958) Scottish novelist

Soul, Dance

“It’s because of you when I’m in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Variant: It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.
Source: Norwegian Wood

Spring

“They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Sleep

“Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

As quoted in Seven Words to the Cross (1979) by Ellsworth Kalas, page 93
Context: Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.

People

“While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Color, Light, Wine, Past

“Oh good. I love being bait for a homicidal mutilator."
Stephanie Plum”

Janet Evanovich Two for the Dough

Source: Two for the Dough

Love

“I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)

Children, People, School, Boy

“Maybe… you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Love, Hell

“To cut off the confusion and accept an answer just because it's too scary not to have an answer is a good way to get the wrong answer.”

Janet Jackson book True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself

Source: True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself

Way

“They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Variant: I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it--seems that only children weep.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Children, Night