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It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
-Woody Allen
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Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4, 167
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"If you can't return a favor, pass it on."
-Louise Brown
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"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
-Leo Buscaglia
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Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
-Pau (Pablo) Casals
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And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.
-Anne Frank, Last diary entry; "The Diary of a Young Girl," 1947; tr. 1952, August 1, 1944
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Affection is the most important thing. And the quality of affection - with your friends, your lovers, your family. But particularly for your own generation.
-Allen Ginsberg
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Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
-Garrison Keillor, We Are Still Married, 1989
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"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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"We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right."
-Nelson Mandela
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Every germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage;...true success follows every right step.
-Orison Swett Marden
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What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing--that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism: The weak and the failures shall perish. They ought even to be helped to perish.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
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"What I don't understand about you is this," she said. "You hold to your old belief in goodness with a tenacity that is virtually unshakable. Yet you are so good at being what you are! You hunt your victims like a dark angel. You kill ruthlessly. You feast all the night long on victims when you choose."
"So?" I looked at her coldly. "I don't know how to be bad at being bad."
She laughed.
"I was a good marksman when I was a young man," I said, "a good actor on the stage. And now I am a good vampire. So much for our understanding of the word 'good.'"
-Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
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Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.
You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing; do something for those who have need of a man's help, something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers live here, too.
-Albert Schweitzer
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What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe
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"After the verb 'to Love,' 'to Help' is the most beautiful verb in the world."
-Bertha von Suttner
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What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
-Leo Tolstoy
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Under the name of truth I also included beauty, virtue, and every kind of goodness, so that for me it was a question of a conception of the relationship between grace and desire. The conviction that had come to me was that when one hungers for bread one does not receive stones. But at that time I had not read the Gospel.
Just as I was certain that desire has in itself an efficacy in the realm of spiritual goodness whatever its form, I thought it was also possible that it might not be effective in any other realm.
http://www.rivertext.com/weil3a.html
-Simone Weil, [letter written in Marseilles, France to her close friend Father Perrin], May 15, 1942
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"Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."
(as Maudie Triplett), Response to "Goodness! What a lovely diamond!" in the film Night After Night (1932). She later used “Goodness had nothing to do with It” for the title of her autobiography (1953)
-Mae West
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"I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for..."
-Thornton Wilder
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Books about Goodness
