Quotes about goodness
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“Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

People, Animals

“I may be irresponsible but I am a good irresponsible.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

“Pajamas are good for the soul.”

Rebecca Stead book When You Reach Me

Source: When You Reach Me

Soul

“My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Lie, Sense

“To love righteousness is to make it grow, not to avenge it. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for a lower good.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Love, Life

“I cannot do it. I cannot bear it. I cannot go back to what I was here. I cannot stand at her side and watch another take her. I am not that strong or that good.”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Stroke of Midnight

Source: A Stroke of Midnight

Strong

“When somebody walks out, it leaves a hole in you. Some people fill it up, the good and the bad, and get on that way. Some people leave it open, maybe long enough to heal, maybe too long, picking at it now and then so it doesn't heal all the way.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Chasing Fire

People, Way

“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Democracy, Time

“I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.”

Orson Scott Card book Shadow of the Hegemon

Source: Shadow of the Hegemon

Kiss, Dependency

“Life turns on a dime. Sometimes towards us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Life

“Good and bad; shade and sunlight, there's but a hair's breath between them. It's all one in the end.”

Juliet Marillier book Child of the Prophecy

Source: Child of the Prophecy

“You can't force folks to have good sense, even if they're family. Maybe especially then.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Across the Great Barrier

Family, Sense

“The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Books, World, School, Music

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Attributed in The Rebirth of a Nation : With a Bill of Rights for America's Third Century (1978) by Robert S. Minor, p. 10; this is a paraphrase of a statement by his father John Adams in a letter to his mother Abigail Adams (27 April 1777): "Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it".
Misattributed

Hope, Freedom

“The most elementary of good manners… at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Sadness, Religion, Personality

“I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good.
I know too much to be good. I know myself.
I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Secret, Fools

“A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Way, Feeling, Sense

“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Wisdom

“Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 9
Context: Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then.

Love, Life, God, Forgiveness

“I may have been dead for the past hundred and fifty years, Susannah,… but that doesn't mean I don't know how people say good night. And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves.”

Meg Cabot book Ninth Key

Source: Ninth Key

People, Past, Night, Dead

“That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye'd otherwise have to confess. Jamie Fraser”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Marriage

“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

Science

“Life should always be like this…. Like lingering over a good meal.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Life

“There are mysteries in Everlost. Some of them are wonderful, and others scary. They should all be explored, though- perhaps that's why we're here: to experience the good and the bad that Everlost has to offer.”

Neal Shusterman book Everlost

Source: Everlost

“Nothing tastes as good as looking good feels.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Feeling

“Wait."
"So what am I supposed to do now?"

"You know, Jin, I would have saved myself from five hundred years' imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey."

(222-223)”

Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese

Source: American Born Chinese

Mountain, Waiting

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin

“You doona want to kill me, which is a good sign. Maybe this is your way of flirting?” (Garreth)”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Way

“Lo, sleep is good, better is death--in sooth
The best of all were never to be born.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Death, Sleep

“Let me say to you what I said once, in an entirely different context to Catherine the Great," Magnus declared. "My dear lady, you cannot afford me, and also, please leave that horse alone. Good night.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Midnight Heir

Horse, Night

“I looked at you… and saw your goodness, your hope, and your faith. Those are what make you beautiful. So, so beautiful.

So it was't my hair?”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Variant: I looked at you... saw your goodness, your hope, and your faith. Those are what make you beautiful. So, so beautiful.
Source: Last Sacrifice

Faith, Beauty, Hope

“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Birthday, Funny

“I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

History, Idea

“Life, a good life, a great life is about "Why not?" May we never forget it.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Source: Happy Birthday

Life, Forgetting

“Honey, the only experts in PMS are men. That's why men are so good at fighting wars; they learned Escape and Evade at home.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: Mr. Perfect

Men, War, Home, Learning

“Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Life

“DeWitt: Loneliness leads to nothing good, only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

People, Loneliness

“The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

Evil

“I'll scream!"
"Likely. If not before, certainly during. I expect they'll hear ye at the next farm; you've got good lungs.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“It was good, and nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever”

Rosamunde Pilcher book The Shell Seekers

Source: The Shell Seekers

Parting, Personality

“There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Way, Literature, Reading

“You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.”

George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara

Source: 1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Evil

“The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Life, Truth, Game

“Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: The Woman Destroyed

Feeling

“I have become very good at clearing histories.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

History

“T. G. T. B. T: too good to be true.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Source: Too Good to Be True

“Tell me of a happy memory, Zarek. One thing in your life that was good. (Astrid)
You. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Life, Memory, Happiness

“A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

"Post to the Host" (July 2005) http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/posthost/2005/07/ <br class="br">Context: Journalism is a good place for any writer to start — the retailing of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

“America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

According to Michael A. Ledeen, this line has been falsely attributed to Tocqueville by Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. See Tocqueville on American Character (2001), p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=gFjQUXYsSR0C&pg=PA25. Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention (July 29, 2016), said, without attribution, "America is great because America is good." <br class="br">Misattributed

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Variant: It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

For Wife, Relationship, Truth, Universe

“Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 23, § 296a
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Source: Counsels and Maxims (The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer)

Books, Time, Reading

“the only thing you need to
do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do
know the answer”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Men

“Philosophy? What good is that?” Isn’t it the art of saying nothing with as many words as possible?”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Art

“We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood.”

Dylan Thomas book Under Milk Wood

Source: Under Milk Wood

“the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.”

Dan Savage (1964) American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner

Source: American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

Reading, Personality

“The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.”

Philip Gourevitch We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Source: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Problem, Memory, Evil, Cry

“Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 13, The Rat's First Letter

Life, People

“Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Time

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“Why are they going to disappear him?'
I don't know.'
It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Sense

“To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Health, Stupidity, Selfishness, Happiness

“Try fighting with your head for a change…
it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Learning, Change, Fight

“Now and then sprays of rain flew over and misted our faces. Every time I refused to wipe away the wetness. It made the world seem so alive to me. I couldn't help but envy the way a good storm got everyone's attention.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Way, Time, Help

“If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Love, God, Appearance, Evil

“Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Parting

“Kat didn't know what to say. It's good to see you too? Thanks for getting me kicked out? Is it possible you've gotten even hotter? I think I might have missed you?”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Thinking

“Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Life, Hope, Appearance

“But I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or to make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.”

Gloria Naylor (1950–2016) American writer

Life, Feeling

“A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Source: Stranger than Fiction

Heart

“It’s never a good thing when the black volhv says “Uh-oh” and then runs for his life.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Gunmetal Magic

Life

“They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”

James Beard (1903–1985) American chef

Food

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

God, Way

“Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered.”

Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) American philosopher

Life, Money, Business

“It was good and nothing good is ever lost.”

Rosamunde Pilcher book The Shell Seekers

Source: The Shell Seekers

“He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Time

“It's hard not to immediately fall in love witha dog who has a good sense of humor.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Love, Dogs, Sense

“Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

Dependency

“In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Falseness

“Change can be good but its always tough to let go of the past”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Change, Past

“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Context: Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Wisdom, People, Failure