An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON GOODNESS
It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
Aristotle (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)
Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.
Marcus Aurelius (121-12180, Roman emperor, philosopher)
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
Saul Bellow (1915-, American novelist)
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876, Russian political theorist)
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876, Russian political theorist)
No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956, German dramatist, poet)
No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it and without someone being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
Phillips Brooks (1835-1893, American minister, poet)
We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861, British poet)
If you have done good, set your mind upon it so that it may be repeated over and over again. Allow yourself to be pleased by good. Accumulating good is joyful.
Buddha (568-488 BC, Indian born, founder of Buddhism)
Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.
Albert Camus (1913-1960, French existential writer)
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
Elias Canetti (1905-1994, Austrian novelist, philosopher)
Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881, Scottish philosopher, author)
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.
Pablo Casals (1876-1973, Spanish cellist, conductor, composer)
Good and bad men are less than they seem.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834, British poet, critic, philosopher)
Committing oneself to unsuitable teachings is no good.
Confucius (BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)
I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner. I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good.
Peter Cooper
It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
There cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he may render himself most acceptable to the Creator by doing good to his creatures.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754, British novelist, dramatist)
I still believe that people are good at heart.
Anne Frank (1929-1945, German Jewish refugee, diarist)
The devil himself is good when he is pleased.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661, British clergyman, author)
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1883-1955, Spanish essayist, philosopher)
Give in to goodness now and then.
Arthur Gordon
Goodness is uneventful. It does not flash, it glows.
David Grayson (1870-1946, American journalist and writer)
Goodness is love in action, love with its hand to the plow, love with the burden on its back, love following his footsteps who went about continually doing good.
James Hamilton
Goodness is something so simple; always live for others, never to seek one's own advantage.
Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961, Swedish statesman, Secretary-General of the UN)
If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -- the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830, British essayist)
Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831, German philosopher)
Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, British author)
To make one good action succeed another is the perfection of goodness.
Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib
How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness.
Alice James (1848-1892, American diarist, sister of William James)
Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions and lost by one.
Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850, Scottish critic, jurist)
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
Milan Kundera (1929-, Czech author, critic)
There are few good women who do not tire of their role.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
To the good I would be good; to the not-good I would also be good, in order to make them good.
Lao-Tzu (BC 600-?, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism)
You must not think of making the good you do a pouring of water into a pump to draw out something for yourselves.
Cotton Mather (1663-1728, American colonial minister, writer)
The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.
Mary McCarthy (1912-1989, American author, critic)
The monument of a great man is not of granite or marble or bronze. It consists of his goodness, his deeds, his love and his compassion.
Alfred A. Montapert (American author)
The monument of a great man is not of granite or marble or bronze. It consists of his goodness, his deeds, his love and his compassion.
Alfred A. Montapert (American author)
Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
Iris Murdoch (1919-, British novelist, philosopher)
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell (1903-1950, British author, "Animal Farm")
In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful -- in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason -- and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes.
Plato (BC 427?-347?, Greek philosopher)
There are two perfectly good men; one dead, and the other unborn.
Chinese Proverb (Sayings of Chinese origin)
Goodness speaks in a whisper, evil shouts
Tibetan Proverb (Sayings of Tibetan origin)
Sow good and you'll reap good; sow bad and you'll reap bad. You don't have to cut down a tree to get its fruit.
Tibetan Proverb (Sayings of Tibetan origin)
Give life meaning through your commitments.
Paul Reinert
To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed.
Ernest Renan (1823-1892, French writer, critic, scholar)
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, Swiss political philosopher, educationist, essayist)
The measure of your holiness is proportionate to the goodness of your will.
Jan Van Ruysbroeck
Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.
Sappho (BC 600-, Greek lyric poet)
Nothing leads to good that is not natural.
Johann Friedrich Von Schiller (1759-1805, German dramatist, poet, historian)
How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616, British poet, playwright, actor)
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822, British poet)
Who does not befriend himself by doing good?
Sophocles (495-406 BC, Greek tragic poet)
He that trusteth in his riches shall fall: but the righteous shall flourish as a branch.
The Holy Bible (Sacred scriptures of Christians and Judaism) Source: Proverbs 11:28
Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God: . . . your reasonable service. Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.
The Holy Bible (Sacred scriptures of Christians and Judaism) Source: Romans 12:1-2
Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness.
The Holy Bible (Sacred scriptures of Christians and Judaism) Source: James 3:18
Goodness is the only investment which never fails.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
Good work is seldom an accident It's done by people who care.
Author Unknown
Look for no reward in goodness but goodness itself.
Author Unknown
Mind your heart. Don't let anything but good get into your heart -- to think good, to do good, to love good.
Author Unknown
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British author, wit)
At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done
Simone Weil (1910-1943, French philosopher, mystic)
One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946, British-born American author)
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900, British author, wit)
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