Quotes about goodness (10000 quotes, page 97)

“The first thing you do is don't let the jobs leave. The companies are leaving. I could name, I mean, there are thousands of them. They're leaving, and they're leaving in bigger numbers than ever. And what you do is you say, fine, you want to go to Mexico or some other country, good luck. We wish you a lot of luck. But if you think you're going to make your air conditioners or your cars or your cookies or whatever you make and bring them into our country without a tax, you're wrong. And once you say you're going to have to tax them coming in, and our politicians never do this, because they have special interests and the special interests want those companies to leave, because in many cases, they own the companies. So what I'm saying is, we can stop them from leaving. We have to stop them from leaving. And that's a big, big factor.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Cars , Thinking , Country

“The only good Dorig is a dead Dorig.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Power of Three

Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 9.

Dead

“No one is bound to be clever, but every one is under an obligation to be good.”

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654) French author, best known for his epistolary essays

Il n'y a personne qui soit tenu d'être habile; mais il n'y en a point qui ne soit obligé d'être bon.
Aristippe, ou De la cour (1658), Discours VII.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 66.

“Valour’s the best reward; ‘tis valour that surpasses all things else : our liberty, our safety, life, estate, our parents, children, country, are by this preserved, protected : valour everything comprises in itself; and every good awaits the man who is possess’d of valour. (translator Thornton)”
[V]irtus praemium est optimum ; virtus omnibus remus anteit profecto : libertas salus vita res et parentes, patria et prognati tutantur, servantur : virtus omnia in sese habet, omnia adsunt bona quem penest virtus.

Plautus Amphitryon

Amphitryon, Act II, scene 2, line 16.
Variant translation: Courage is the very best gift of all; courage stands before everything, it does, it does! It is what maintains and preserves our liberty, safety, life, and our homes and parents, our country and children. Courage comprises all things: a man with courage has every blessing.
Amphitryon

Life , Children , Parent , Country

“I repeat what I said when I started out — that I have no axe to grind, that I'm not asking anybody for anything. It's all water over the dam as far as I am concerned. I can say that my conscience is clear and that I'll stand on my record in that World Series. I'm not what you call a good Christian, but I believe in the Good Book, particularly where it says "what you sow, so shall you reap." I have asked the Lord for guidance before, and I am sure He gave it to me. I'm willing to let the Lord be my judge.”

Joe Jackson (1887–1951) American baseball player

This is the Truth! (1949)

Books , World , Water

“Lois: Good coffee, huh?
Emma: Lois, I think you're a very attractive woman and I'd like to sleep with you.
Lois: [chokes] Gak! Ahem! You don't - coff - fool around, do you?
Emma: No, but I'd like to.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#53, "Swept Away" (1989), collected in New, Improved! DTWOF (1990).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Fools , Coffee , Thinking , Sleep

“I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. This might earn me some enemies, but in some ways they may be even more moral. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

People , World , Way , Problem

“It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

Lie , Art

“Depp: I would never be disrespectful to my country, to the people, especially the kids who are over there serving in the armed forces. My uncle was wounded in Vietnam, paralyzed from the neck down. I would never say those things the way they claim I said them.
Interviewer: What exactly did you say?
Depp: I essentially said the United States is a very young country compared with Europe. We're still growing. That's it. I wouldn't say anything anti-American. I'm an American, and I love my country.
Interviewer: What's your view of President Bush?
Depp: What can I say? He's somebody's kid. He's somebody's father. God bless him. Good luck. You know what I mean? I don't agree with his politics, and I'm not going to pretend to, but I don't agree with a lot of people's politics.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," Playboy (May 2004)

Love , God , People , Way

“Pioneers need good neighbors.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 14, “Land of My Own” (p. 147)

“Nick: I've also found someone to take an option on the photographs.
Mrs Prentice: What photographs?
Nick: I had a camera concealed in the room.
Mrs Prentice: When I gave myself to you the contract didn't include cinematic rights.
Nick: I'd like a hundred quid for the negatives. You've got until lunchtime.
Mrs Prentice: I shall complain to the manager.
Nick: It will do you no good. He took the photographs.
Mrs. Prentice: Oh, this is scandalous! I'm a married woman.
Nick: You didn't behave like a married woman last night.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

What the Butler Saw (1969), Act I

Night

“I don’t see any point or any good in drugs that are as disruptive as cocaine. I never tried heroin. I tried alcohol and most of the others when I was 15, and got it out of the way—finished with the stuff.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Quoted on page 159 of Young Hollywood http://books.google.com/books?id=yYQjAQAAIAAJ&q=%22disruptive+as+cocaine.%22&dq=%22disruptive+as+cocaine.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FANbUcuJFcG1iwKH2IFQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg by James Cameron-Wilson.

Alcohol , Way

“That's five stars to start with. That's five stars to start with. That's Gil Evans, isn't it? The only thing that disturbed me about this—the whole thing, in its entirety, was tremendously satisfying: performance, orchestration is good, the harmonic usage is beautiful, the contrasting texture of orchestra, the whole thing is just great—but there are certain sections there when the background was so lovely it just seemed like the alto saxophone was out of place. Now this is the type of thing that just makes me smile. I enjoy every minute of it. I don't have to go for a "peak" and then think about something else while I'm listening. Gil Evans' writing, to me, is such a boon that when he came along with the Miles Ahead album, I was thankful, because since about the Stan Kenton Orchestra of 1952, where the writing had been very good, between Mulligan and Rugolo and the whole works, between those periods there had been a void, a retrogression back to the roots, and this took writing back to a standpoint which just wasn't interesting. So when Evans came along, I just flipped.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing Evans' arrangement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4dcHdoR4k of Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca,", from New Bottle, Old Wine; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Love , Smile , Beauty , Star

“Place something good in front of me, and I'll smash it to pieces.”

Jim Goad (1961) Author, publisher

Shit Magnet: One Man's Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World's Guilt (Feral House, 2002)

“Christ, in that place He hath put you, hath intrusted you with a dear pledge, which is His own glory, and hath armed you with His sword to keep the pledge, and make a good account of it to God.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 106.

God , Christ

“Anyone with a good classical education could learn Chinese by himself without difficulty.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

1968 remark, quoted in Japan Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January-March 1971), p. 107

Education , Learning

“They learned how to put up a pretty good bluff—and bluff counts a lot in politics. p. 18”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 4, Reformers Only Mornin’ Glories

Learning

“What may be good circumstances in one man, cannot be deemed so in another.”

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818) Lord Chief Justice of England

Rex v. Locker (1803), 5 Esp. 106.

“You are doing an excellent thing, one which will be wholesome for you, if, as you write me, you are persisting in your effort to attain sound understanding; it is foolish to pray for this when you can acquire it from yourself. We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol's ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. A god is near you, with you, and in you. This is what I mean, Lucilius: there sits a holy spirit within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our a guardian.”
Facis rem optimam et tibi salutarem, si, ut scribis, perseveras ire ad bonam mentem, quam stultum est optare, cum possis a te impetrare. Non sunt ad caelum elevandae inarms nee exorandus aedituus, ut nos ad aurem simulacri, quasi magis exaudiri possimus, admittat; Prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est. Ita dico, Lucili: sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos...

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLI: On the god within us

God , Way , Understanding , Effort

“In my opinion the third sound principle is this—to strive to cultivate and maintain, ay, to the very uttermost, what is called the concert of Europe; to keep the Powers of Europe in union together. And why? Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize and fetter and bind up the selfish aims of each. I am not here to flatter either England or any of them. They have selfish aims, as, unfortunately, we in late years have too sadly shown that we too have had selfish aims; but then common action is fatal to selfish aims. Common action means common objects; and the only objects for which you can unite together the Powers of Europe are objects connected with the common good of them all. That, gentlemen, is my third principle of foreign policy.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), pp. 115-116.
1870s

Selfishness

“The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 3, The Golden Horde, p. 59

Business

“Until we reach the end of time, we don’t know whether something’s been good or bad; we can only judge the intentions of those who acted.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Fiction, The Book of the New Sun (1980–1983), The Urth of the New Sun (1987), Chapter 33, "Aboard the Alcyone" (p. 237)

Time

“The basic line in any good verse is cadenced… building it around the natural breath structures of speech.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)

Nature

“Boychick, wake up! Be something! Make your life something good. For the love of an old man who sees in your young days his new life, for such love take the world in your two hands and make it like new. Go out and fight so life shouldn't be printed on dollar bills.”

Clifford Odets (1906–1963) Playwright, screenwriter, director, actor

Jacob, in Awake and Sing! (1935), Act I

Love , Life , World , Fight

“Good news from France, where the man picked by Nicolas Sarkozy as his foreign minister is not the execrable Hubert Védrine, but Bernard Kouchner - a socialist who supports Israel and the invasion of Iraq.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

May 18, 2007 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25539_Breaking-_New_French_FM_Doesnt_Hate_Israel&only

Support

“I understood that if ever one wanted to live with someone you cooked for them and they came running. But then it is my idea of hell these days, living with someone. The idea of sharing your life with someone is just utterly ghastly. I know why people do it, but it's never a good idea.”

Nigel Slater (1958) English food writer, journalist and broadcaster

The Real Cook - Writers and critics - Celebrities and articles - Food - Waitrose.com http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/wfi/foodpeople/writersandcritics/9810064.asp

Life , People , Idea , Hell

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt. […]
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane's article. […] It is breaking Aristotle's canon—to demand in every enquiry that the degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety.
"A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), published posthumously in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1966)
Some of these ideas were included in the essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949) (see below).

Life , Men , People , Truth

“Fifth, every Freeman hath such a full and absolute property in Goods, that no Taxes, Loans, or Benevolences ordinarily and legally can be imposed on them, without their own consent by their Representatives in Parliament…”

Edward Chamberlayne (1616–1703) English writer

Source: Angliæ Notitia, 1676, 1704, p. 302.

“I met Donald in 1979 when I was sent to New York to organize Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. He and his father Fred Trump were members of the Reagan for President finance committee. We became good friends. I was invited to two of his weddings. He attended my wedding in Washington DC. He is very smart, very tough and can be very very funny. He is also very tall.”

Roger Stone (1952) American lobbyist

Wikinews interviews three figures from Donald Trump's political past (October 2015)

Wedding

“The only good leader is a reluctant one.”

Tony Vigorito (1950) American writer

Nine Kinds of Naked (2008)

“People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer. I mean, it's not like Stevie Nicks or Linda Ronstadt were dogs. It's not like this is some new thing. But there was at one point a larger variety, but now the catchphrase is "the whole package," the "American Idol" reality that you're a model first and a singer second.”

Kathleen Hanna (1968) American musician and feminist activist

The original riot grrrl on Katy Perry, '90s revival http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/07/kathleen.hanna.documentary/, CNN (2011).

People , Dogs , Reality

“If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

As quoted in The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros (2006) by Mark Tier, p. 217

Money

“There's no disappointment in memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda (1876)

Disappointment , Memory

“Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.”

Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974) German Nazi leader convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trial

To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Change

“Thank goodness there were people who were happy with nothing, thought Julia, so that people like her (and everyone else she had ever met), could have more.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 7

People , Happiness

“There is no better feeling than the feeling that I have done something right. That feeling comes so rarely and is so fleeting that I can never really enjoy it. So in a way, it's not a good feeling at all.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

October 7
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Way , Feeling

“The cat does not merely experience contentment, he exudes it. You cannot be in the presence of a contented cat and not have some of that contentment rub off on you. Which surely is a good part of the reason we love cats so.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 3

Love , Cats , Parting

“I don't believe that the average fellow has anything like a true line on the value of wrist action in hitting anything—a baseball, a golf ball, a tennis ball or a polo ball. If you watch most of them, you will see they are trying to hit with their bodies, with their shoulders, with their arms—with almost everything except their wrists. I think it comes because most of them are overanxious, all tied up, too tense. They start by gripping too tightly. That kills off the hands and wrists. Their wrists get locked and then they have to swing their shoulders and bodies in. You'd be surprised how far a fellow can hit a ball, using only his wrists. I know I've been caught off guard or out of position on a sharp breaking curve, have had to slap at the ball, using only my wrists and have now and then watched it sail over the fence. The wrist is the mainspring—both wrists in baseball and golf. If you get them to work the rest is fairly easy. If you don't get them to work you are not going to do any good hitting. You can't get any speed in closing a door if the hinges are rusty and won't work. Hack Wilson must have great wrist action, for no short, stocky guy is going to hit that many home runs without a lot of it.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "The Sportlight" by Grantland Rice, in The Baltimore Sun (August 22, 1930), p. 13

Guy , Home , Thinking , Speed

“Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Lead Belly too
An' to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Compare: "We come with the dust and we go with the wind." Woody Guthrie, Pastures of Plenty.
Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Song to Woody

Men , People , Travel , Heart

“Let us think only of the good days that are to come.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

(1945)

Thinking

“The chief business of education… is to attempt to form good habits in children, to improve the understanding, and to check the formation of bad habits.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Children , Education , Understanding , Business

“Sport, in general, tends to be a good decade behind the rest of society in terms of talking about these issues. There's been a lot of progress. There's women's equality in sport, talking about depression in sport, homophobia in sport, and drugs in sport. I actually think when gay marriage is legalised, and it becomes such a non-issue in wider society, it will likewise become a non-issue in sport.”

Matthew Mitcham (1988) Australian diver

We Asked Australian Diver Matthew Mitcham Why More Gay Athletes Aren't Coming Out https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/wdapzw/we-asked-olympian-matthew-mitcham-why-more-gay-athletes-arent-coming-out, Vice.nz, October 12, 2016.

Women , Marriage , Thinking , Sport

“The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
1910s, Memories and Studies (1911)

Men , People

“It's simple. Both the U. S. and England advance today with a victory. Win, and you're in. Our quarrel is not with them, for now. Though they did come here looking well beyond us, and we played them dead even. Now, ask yourself? Whose boots would you rather be in? Our goalkeeper got kicked in the ribs; theirs gave up something they call 'a howler'. Next, we buried ourselves. I know. But then, we made three shots heard around the world. Though the last one was drowned out by a lone, ludicrous whistle. So, who would you rather have leading by example? Who would you rather have, as your last line of defense? Who would you rather have, calling the shots? For us, it's been about a common goal. Not an automatic pass for a pack of superstars, and while our team is the U. S.? Today, you can call them 'us'. Because they've truly taken America along for the ride. While it appears England has turned on their team and vice-versa, we're winning our game. May their country forgive them if they don't win theirs. Ah, what the heck? Good luck today, we might just see you in the final. The South African journey continues. This is the World Cup.”

Martin Sheen (1940) American actor

United States v. Algeria https://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=g2PZ5OWE8Rw (23 June 2010), 2010 FIFA World Cup.
2010s

World , Game , Forgiveness , Appearance

“When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Life , People , Books , School

“[T]here is a path of ascent, requiring and enabling us to undergo a transformation of both society and the self, and rewarding us with an incomparable good. The incomparable good is a greater share of the attributes of the divine, or eternal life, or a greater life, with higher powers, making us more godlike.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 121 (explaining the religious tradition Unger calls "struggling with the world")

Life

“A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behavior, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
Discipline and Punish (1977)

Behavior

“God is sitting here, looking into my very soul to see if I think right thoughts. Yet I am not afraid, for I try to be right and good; and He knows every one of my struggles.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=EsovAQAAMAAJ&q=%22God+is+sitting+here+looking+into+my+very+soul+to+see+if+I+think+right+thoughts+Yet+I+am+not+afraid+for+I+try+to+be+right+and%22&pg=PA39#v=onepage to Abiah Root http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/abiah_root (29 January 1850)

God , Soul , Thinking

“L. Walras first formulated the state of the economic system at any point of time as the solution of a system of simultaneous equations representing the demand for goods by consumers, the supply of goods by producers and the equilibrium condition that supply equal demand on every market.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Source: 1950s-1960s, "Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy." 1954, p. 265

Time

“Americans don't understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They're extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies, which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Film Comment, May/June 1990
Interviews

Understanding

“It actually went like this: we were at school and Ben said he didn’t like Nirvana so much. Then one of our friends said: You should listen to Sliver. So he wanted to request Sliver for himself on the radio. And I wanted to request a song of an Australian group(You Am I), Berlin Chair. We told Chris to write Sliver Chair, but he wrote it as Silver Chair. Then we thought: That’s a good name. That’s how it went.”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

On the name 'Silverchair', Press interview, April 1996
Interviews

School

“I do not defend Conchis’ decision at the execution, but I defend the reality of the dilemma. God and freedom are totally anti-pathetic concepts; and men believe in their imaginary gods most often because they are afraid to believe in the other thing. I am old enough to realise now that they do sometimes with good reason. True freedom lies between each two, never in one alone, and therefore is never absolute freedom.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Introduction (1977 edition)
The Magus (1965)

Men , God , Reality , Decision

“Sweet oblivion, sleep
dissolving all, the good and the bad, once it seals our eyes.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XX. 85–86 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Sleep

““Why do you tell me this?”
“Perhaps because I am a cat and it amuses me to be arbitrary and do you a good turn.””

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 2 (p. 9)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

Cats

“No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law.”

John Trumbull (poet) (1750–1831) American poet

Canto iii, line 489.
McFingal (1775-1782)

Law , Drawing

“[T]he American dream is still alive and well, thanks: Even the newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can truly become an American. But European Muslims can't become French or Dutch or Italian or German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain second-class citizens. On a good day. And they're supposed to take over the continent that's exported more death than any other?”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (2007), p. 334

Death , Dreams

“While I was never over-romanced by the West Point graduate, at the same time, I always felt, by God, a West Pointer ought to be damn good.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Source: The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 22

God , Time

“We need to build incentives to virtue rather than incentives to vice, which prevail in the existing system and are self-interested, instrumental and unrelational. That’s the direction of travel. Towards the Common Good.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, Tackling Poverty Together http://www.bluelabour.org/2013/11/24/tackling-poverty-together/

Travel

“There are always clouds in the international sky. You never get a perfectly blue sky in foreign affairs. And there are clouds even now. But we feel confident that the common sense, the patience, the good-will, the forbearance which enabled us to solve greater and more difficult and more urgent problems last year will enable us to pull through these difficulties at the present moment.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the City of London (17 July 1914), quoted in The Times (18 July 1914), p. 10
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Feeling , Confidence , Problem , Sense

“There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 23.

Way

“People say, Well, he wore that body out. Well, maybe I did. But it was to a good purpose. They should be thankful that I wore it out to the purpose I wore it out and that was writing and recording and touring and doing concerts. Everywhere I could possibly do them that I thought I might enjoy them. I thought people might enjoy me.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

CNN interview (2002)

People

“Oh look, an ATM! Ok, here we go! I lost all my money, now what do I do? Get a gun! Rob a casino! Good idea! Look at all the lights! This is beautiful.”

Bill Burr (1968) American actor, comedian and a celebrity podcaster

Premium Blend, episode [2.03], June 20, 1998

Money , Beauty , Idea , Light

“If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,—
Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry,
Or lest I should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.”

Jean Sirmond (1589–1649) French poet

Causæ Bibendi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). These lines are a poetic translation of a Latin epigram (erroneously ascribed to Henry Aldrich in the Biographia Britannica, second edition, vol. i. p. 131), which Menage and De la Monnoye attribute to Père Sirmond:
Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi:
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis atque futura;
Et vini bonitas, et quælibet altera causa.
Menagiana, vol. i. p. 172.

Men , Drink , Thinking , Wine

“Question: Is not the person who has been transported to interior detachment freed from external exercises?
Answer: One sees few people reach the condition you describe without their strength being wasted. The efforts of those who really achieve it affect them to the marrow. And so, when they realise what is to be done and left undone, they continue to practise the usual exercises, performing them more or less frequently as their strength and the occasion permit.
Question: Where do the pangs of conscience and other anxieties of seemingly good people come from, as well as the unrestrained latitude (of conscience) in other people?
Answer: Both types are focusing their attention on their own image but in different ways; the one group spiritually, the other bodily.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

People , Way , Exercises , Question

“Just because I am cheerful and jovial and look good, doesn’t mean that I can’t act.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Pratim D. Gupta

“There is nobody who is not surprised of the small price of pins; but we shall be even more surprised, when we know how many different operations, most of them very delicate, are mandatory to make a good pin. We are going to go through these operations in a few words to stimulate the curiosity to know their detail; this enumeration will supply as many articles which will make the division of this work… The first operation is to have brass go through the drawing plate to calibrate it.”

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700–1782) French naval engineer, botanist and agronomist

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1776) l’"Art de l’Épinglier" (The Art of the Pin-Maker). Introduction

Drawing

“No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Secret of Father Brown

The Secret of Father Brown (1927) The Secret of Father Brown
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Hope , Soul

“So I had to face the fact that I was blessed with abilities that were considered symptoms of emotional abnormality or mental derangement by psychology, often thought of as demonic by religion, and whose very existence was denied altogether by science. So in my darker moments I used to think that my psychic initiation and subsequent experiences were a mixed bag, to say the least. But the fact is that I was very sensitive to criticism for the very good reason that often I shared many of the beliefs that stimulated it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 48

Religion , Thinking , Science

“One cannot help but be struck by the diversity that characterizes efforts to study the management process. If it is true that psychologists like to study personality traits in terms of a person's reactions to objects and events, they could not choose a better stimulus than management science. Some feel it is a technique, some feel it is a branch of mathematics, or of mathematical economics, or of the "behavioral sciences," or of consultation services, or just so much nonsense. Some feel it is for management (vs. labor), some feel it ought to be for the good of mankind — or for the good of underpaid professors.
But this diversity of attitude, which is really characteristic of all fields of endeavor, is matched by another and more serious kind of diversity. In the management sciences, we have become used to talking about game theory, inventory theory, waiting line theory. What we mean by "theory" in this context is that if certain assumptions are valid, then such-and-such conclusions follow. Thus inventory theory is not a set of statements that predict how inventories will behave, or even how they should behave in actual situations, but is rather a deductive system which becomes useful if the assumptions happen to hold. The diversity of attitude on this point is reflected in two opposing points of view: that the important problems of management science are theoretical, and that the important problems are factual.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 7-8
1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Behavior , Feeling , Game , Mathematics

“You who survive these times must not forget. Forget neither the good nor the bad… I want this to be known: that there were no nameless heroes here; that they were people with names, faces, longings and hopes, and that the pain of the very last of them was no less than the pain of the very first… Man's duty does not end with this fight, for to be a man will continue to demand a heroic heart as long as mankind is not quite human.”

Julius Fučík (journalist) (1903–1943) Czech journalist and revolutionary

Cited in: John Fraser (1985) "Prayers, parades in Berlin," The Globe and Mail, 8 May 1985; Cited in: Julius Lukasiewicz (1994) Ignorance Explosion: Understanding Industrial Civilization. p. 61.

Pain , People , Hope , Time

“How many gay people have not had children as a result of coming out of the closet and being gay? Millions, isn't that correct? Some of our most talented, wonderful, intelligent people, because of the openness of modern American society going back for now 40 years, have opted out of being hidden or closeted. In the old days, if a person was gay, or felt an attraction to the same sex, they probably would have gotten married to hide it. And they probably would've had a family, producing children. But because of this 'let it all hang out,' 'if you feel gay, act gay,' 'if it feels good, do it,' they've opted not to have children. And as a result, number one, society has lost millions of remarkable children. That's one point that is almost irrefutable. And for years I have thought about this. Why is society devolving so rapidly? One of the reasons is some of our most talented intelligent people have not had children. That's one point. And then there's another point I wanna make, and this is more important… I kept asking myself, why are gay people liberal? Why are most of them so liberal? Why is society unraveling on so many other levels, putting aside the issue of sexuality. And one of the reasons is because some of our most intelligent…passionate people happen to be gay. And while in the past they would've taken on other causes that are so critical for the betterment of society, they've been single-focused only on gay issues. And as a result society has again devolved, because the gay movement has sucked so many people into a single issue. They've ignored all the other important issues of our society, which is why we're collapsing. Why would a gay person want open borders? Why would a gay person want unlimited welfare? Why would a gay person want to be tolerant for Islamists coming into America? Because they're not focused on any of it. Their community has focused them only on one issue. And as a result the entire society has lost out. … And therefore I would say to you that a traditional society has offered us protections, both obvious and not so obvious, that we may not be aware of, and that openness is not necessarily for the betterment of the people or for society.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-04-29
Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNm7C_uJpI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m27s)
2015

Children , People , Family , Sex

“I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began again to think instead of trying not to think - good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings [of Arles ] has helped my morale.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 4 May 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 481), p 24
1880s, 1888

Way , Drink , Nature , Thinking

“Kylie Minogue is just a demonic little idiot as far as I'm concerned. She gets cool dance producers to work with her for some bizarre reason, I don't know why. She doesn't even have a good name. It's a stupid name, Kylie, I just don't get it”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in " Kylie 'demonic', says Oasis star http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2070390.stm", at news.bbc.co.uk, 27 June, 2002
Controversy with other artists

Stupidity , Dance

“I think we in the mainstream media — especially cable television — sometimes bungled coverage of Trump. There was too much uncritical television coverage of Trump because he was good for ratings; then there was not enough investigation of his business dealings, racism and history of sexual assaults, and too much false equivalency that equated the two candidates as equally flawed. More broadly, we in the mainstream media are out of touch with working-class America; we spend too much time chatting up senators, and not enough visiting unemployed steel workers. Yet for all of our sins in the mainstream media, these alt-right websites are both far more pernicious and increasingly influential.”

Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist

Lies in the Guise of News in the Trump Era (November 12, 2016)

History , Business , Thinking , Time

“For every thing there is an embellishment (or a decoration), and the embellishment of the Qur’an is a good voice.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 92, Page 190
Shi'ite Hadith

“A tree does not try to be a koala bear. A dog does not try to be a bird. A stone does not pretend it is alive. Why should I pretend I am intelligent, or good-looking, or successful?”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

July 16
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Dogs , Intelligence , Bird , Tree

“The critics barged in to harp on every decision we made... Sadly, I began to doubt myself. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough sailor.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 48

Decision

“Good wits jump; 45 a word to the wise is enough.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Variant: Good wits jump; 45 a word to the wise is enough.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 38.

“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 204
1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Life , Star , Tree , Freedom

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

God , Pain , Way , Feeling

“"What, now?" "Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy."”

Iain Banks Culture series

Look to Windward page 213.
Culture series, Look to Windward (2000)

“My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don't need to fuss and moan —
"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone."

My body? — Oh! — If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.

Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you. [Joe Hill]”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

My Last Will http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Last_Will (1915-11-18)

Life , Flowers

“Narrated Ibn 'Abbas: The Prophet said: "I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful." It was asked, "Do they disbelieve in Allah?" (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, "They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, 'I have never received any good from you."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sunni Hadith

Women , Hell

“He usually lacks the originality of Henryson and the brilliance of Dunbar and Douglas. But what there is of him is good all through.”

David Lindsay (1490–1554) Scottish noble and poet

C. S. Lewis English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) p. 100.
Criticism

“The oldest definition [of “good”] was this: the noble, the mightier, higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be good of the first rank in contradistinction to everything low and low-minded. Noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste, is the primary concept from which develops good in the sense of spiritually aristocratic. The lowly are designated as bad (not evil). Bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later. In the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the German word schlecht is identical with schlicht”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

cf. schlechtweg and schlechterdings
Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 30

People , Sense , Evil

“Canada has become trouble recently … It’s always the worst Americans who go there … We could have taken them over so easy. But I only want the western part, with the ski areas, the cowboys, and the right wingers. They’re the only good parts of Canada.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

As quoted in I Hate Ann Coulter! (2006) by Unanimous, p. 66.
2006

Parting

“The greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes when you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes; because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember: Others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win, unless you hate them. And then, you destroy yourself.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Speech to the assembled White House staff before his final departure (9 August 1974)
1970s

Hate , Sadness , Disappointment , Mountain

“I will be even briefer than Fabian, I thought I would creep in the back and I don’t have to say anything but what I would like to say and I came in when Eddy was 10 speaking and that was because we had a very constructive meeting with the High Commissioner yesterday and we made some decisions which is always good. Where I disagree sometimes with the Greek Cypriots is that I wanted to vote for Turkey never to be in the European Union! I have no interest in Turkey being in the EU until all, a whole host of problems are resolved and it is of course the Cyprus problem for me first on the agenda, but it is the Kurdish problem, its the military backing barracks, and all the rest of that, you know there are no human rights and many human rights violations in Turkey. So whether it takes 20 years or longer that makes me think that Turkey is using Cyprus as a lever to get as much out of it as is possible and of course the longer it takes for them not to be a member the longer that lever takes and the longer we will have 200,000 or 300,000 Turks settled in Cyprus and that becomes a very much bigger problem than it is now already and I think that I have said that at three or four meetings before rather than us talking about the problem of Cyprus which makes that it becomes a problem for the Republic as it is worldwide known we ought to talk about the problem of Turkey, it is really a 100% Turkish problem that they're not acting in the way in which they should be acting and if that’s the case well shove it to them! And I saw about 50 Turkish … [(A Turkish Cypriot member of the audience accused him saying "You are racist!" and returns his comments…. Many interruptions and heckling from the audience, some Greek Cypriots shouted for the Turkish Cypriot to get out if he didn’t like what he was hearing and three or four police officers arrived in the room.)] Well, it has certainly allocated my speech time and I would only say to the gentleman that we have nothing against honest straightforward Turkish Cypriots but Turkey is using the occupied territory to settle Turkish people they don’t necessarily want in Turkey, many are unemployed, that is not racism, that is a set of true facts and I don’t know whether you are a Turkish Cypriot or a Turkish person I have no disrespect for anybody in the world, but I have deep disrespect for the Turkish Government and the Turkish military and that is my last word on that!”

Rudi Vis (1941–2010) British politician

[At the Friends of Cyprus meeting in the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons, 3rd July 2007] (see External links for transcript)

People , World , Way , Problem

“I feel quite unable to adopt the opinion that the moment goods pass into the possession of the consumer they cease altogether to have the attributes of capital.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 209.

Feeling

“Good love is hard to find.
You got lucky, babe.
You got lucky, babe, when I found you.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

You Got Lucky, written with Mike Campbell
Lyrics, Long After Dark (1982)

Love

“Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) — neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"The Indian Jugglers"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Laughter , Teachers , Time

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love , Life , Death , God

“Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of African slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men's sins… Who gave them a right to decide that it is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not the Constitution; the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms, and imposes obligations in connection with that recognition. Not the Bible; that justifies it. Not the good of society; for if they go where it exists, they find that society recognizes it as good…”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech in Boston http://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/Content.aspx?id=80 (11 October 1858).
1850s

Men

“I say that some things can be said to belong to the law of nature in two ways: One way is as first practical principles known from their terms or as conclusions necessarily entailed by them. These are said to belong to the natural law in the strictest sense, and there can be no dispensation in their regard… But this is not the case when we speak in general of all the precepts of the second table. For the reasons behind the commands and prohibitions there are not practical principles that are necessary in an unqualified sense, nor are they simply necessary conclusions from such. For they contain no goodness such as is necessarily prescribed for attaining the goodness of the ultimate end, nor in what is forbidden is there such malice as would turn one away necessarily from the last end, for even if the good found in these [precepts] were not commanded, the ultimate end could still be loved and attained, whereas if the evil proscribed by them were not forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisition of the ultimate end.”

Duns Scotus (1265–1308) Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed

Scotus (c. 1300), Ordinatio 3.37 as cited in: Peter A. (2004) "Kwasniewski William of Ockham and the Metaphysical Roots of Natural Law" in: The Aquinas Review, 2004

Love , Law , Way , Nature

“Well I wot that heaven and earth and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the cause why it shewed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in the presence of Him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 8

Soul

“The Hindus lost Kabul for good only in the closing decade of the 10th century. In AD 963 Alaptigin, a Turkish slave of the succeeding Samanid dynasty, had been able to establish an independent Muslim principality in Kabul with his seat at Ghazni. It was his general and successor, Subuktigin, who conquered Kabul after a struggle spread over two decades. The Hindus under king Jayapala of Udbhandapur made a bold bid to recapture Kabul in AD 986-987. A confederate Hindu army to which the Rajas of Delhi, Ajmer, Kalinjar and Kanauj has contributed troops and money, advanced into the heartland of the Islamic kingdom of Ghazni. “According to Utbi, the battle lasted several days and the warriors of Subuktigin, including prince Mahmood, were ‘reduced to despair.’ But a snow-storm and rains upset the plans of Jayapala who opened negotiations for peace. He sent the following message to Subuktigin: ‘You have heard and know the nobleness of Indians - they fear not death or destruction… In affairs of honour and renown we would place ourselves upon the fire like roast meat, and upon the dagger like the sunrays.’” But the peace thus concluded proved temporary. The Muslims resumed the offensive and the Hindus were defeated and driven out of Kabul. Dr. Mishra concludes with the comment that Jayapala “was perhaps the last Indian ruler to show such spirit of aggression, so sadly lacking in later Rajput kings.””

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD. ISBN 9788185990187 , quoting Ram Gopal Misra, Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D. (1983).

Death , Money , Fear , Peace

“Thenceforth Jeanne's deeper infatuations always seemed to concern gentlemen of a certain age and standing in the financial world. Older men say such interesting things, and Jeanne was always a good listener. Anything you said was news to her.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Madame du Barry

Men , Age , World

“I never entertained the dreadful thought that my face was anything other than good and fair until, in an act of revelation, I picked up a mirror.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Ni thybiais, ddewwrdrais ddirdra,
Na bai deg f'wyneb a da,
Oni theimlais, waith amlwg,
Y drych.
"Y Drych" (The Mirror), line 1; translation from Carl Lofmark Bards and Heroes (Felinfach: Llanerch, 1989) p. 96.

“The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.”

Ammon Hennacy (1893–1970) American Christian radical

"Christian Anarchism, a Definition"

World , Christ , Dependency

“I suspected there would be a good-size crowd once the word got out about my hanging.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

At the National Portrait Gallery unveiling of his portrait (19 December 2008), quoted in David Byers, " President Bush attends his own hanging http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/americas/article1998914.ece", The Times (December 19, 2008); Christine Lagorio, " A Public Hanging (Of Sorts) For The Bush Family http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-public-hanging-of-sorts-for-the-bush-family/", CBS News (December 19, 2008).
2000s, 2008

Quotes about goodness page 97

Quotes about goodness
page 97