Quotes about goodness
page 40

Garrison Keillor photo

“That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

See also the Wikipedia article on the Lake Wobegon effect.
A Prairie Home Companion, News from Lake Wobegon

Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.”

William Black talking with Oskar
"A Simple Solution to an Impossible Problem" (p. 297)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: "It's easy to be emotional. You can always make a scene... Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good."

Swami Vivekananda photo
Libba Bray photo
Richelle Mead photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Henry Miller photo
Gabrielle Zevin photo
Jimi Hendrix photo
Holly Black photo

“He looks like the good boy he's never been.”

Source: Red Glove

N.T. Wright photo

“Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

Andy Warhol photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Goldie Hawn photo
John Updike photo

“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

"They Thought They Were Better" in TIME magazine (21 July 1980) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924295,00.html

Cassandra Clare photo
Brandon Sanderson photo
Jonathan Stroud photo
Anna Sewell photo

“It is good people who make good places.”

Source: This sentence is widely cited as being by Anna Sewell and from Black Beauty, but it is not to be found in the novel—her only published writing. The closest thing to it is "good places make good horses" in Ch. IX (pp. 45–46).

Holly Black photo
Alain de Botton photo
Thornton Wilder photo
John Adams photo

“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.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s
Source: Letter to Abigail Adams (27 April 1777), published as Letter CXI in Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife (1841) edited by Charles Francis Adams, p. 218

Libba Bray photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo

“Done is better than good.”

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

James Patterson photo
Richelle Mead photo
Andy Warhol photo

“Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 92
Context: Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called 'art' or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they'd say 'Money is bad', and 'Working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Tom Stoppard photo
David Levithan photo

“You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Maya Angelou photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Walter Bagehot photo

“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Shakespeare
Literary Studies (1879)
Context: The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

Jack Kerouac photo

“Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: Selected Letters, 1940-1956

Cassandra Clare photo

“You’re sarcastic twelve hours a day, but you’re almost never spiteful. You have a good heart under all the glitter.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Course of True Love [and First Dates]

Confucius photo

“Bad days, good days, ‘I’ll cut you if you look at me the wrong way’ days. I’ll take them all.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Gunmetal Magic

Nicholas Sparks photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Gillian Flynn photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.”

Source: Meditations

Julia Quinn photo
Jenny Han photo
Donald J. Trump photo
George Carlin photo
Ella Wheeler Wilcox photo

“On your best day, you're only as good as I am on my worst with one arm tied behind my back.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

William Hazlitt photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Jennifer Egan photo
Richelle Mead photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“Never miss a party… good for the nerves--like celery.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Gatsby Girls

Jack Kerouac photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Wisława Szymborska photo
Gustave Flaubert photo
Susan Elizabeth Phillips photo
Helen Fielding photo
David Levithan photo

“Just once I want it to be easy and neat. But no, there is never a good decision. I pick what I can live with.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

David Suzuki photo
Joshua Ferris photo
Albert Einstein photo
Susan Sontag photo
Sylvia Day photo
Roland Barthes photo
Joseph Murphy photo

“Busy your mind with the concepts of harmony, health, peace, and good will, and wonders will happen in your life.”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind -

Louisa May Alcott photo
Cinda Williams Chima photo

“Good judgment comes from bad experience. Unfortunately, most of that comes from bad judgment.

- Tara Daniels”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: The Sweetest Thing

Nicholas Sparks photo
Tom Petty photo

“Yeah and it's over before you know it.
It all goes by so fast.
Yeah, the bad nights last forever,
And the good nights don't ever seem to last”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

The Best of Everything
Lyrics, Southern Accents (1985)

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Jim Butcher photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

To the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

Jim Henson photo
James Patterson photo
Elizabeth Gilbert photo
Philip G. Zimbardo photo

“If you put good apples into a bad situation, you’ll get bad apples.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment
Isaac Asimov photo
James A. Michener photo