quotations and passages on goodness

Good actions are the invisible
hinges on the doors of heaven.

Victor Hugo

And when we come to think of it, goodness is uneventful.
It does not flash, it glows. It is deep, quiet, and very simple.
It passes not with oratory, it is commonly foreign to riches,
nor does it often sit in the places of the mighty:
but may be felt in the touch of a friendly hand or the look of a kindly eye.

David Grayson

Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself
an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy
and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days
on the sunniest heights of our soul.

Maurice Maeterlinck

Conquer a person who never gives by gifts;
Subdue untruthful people by truthfulness;
Vanquish an angry person by gentleness;
And overcome the evil person by goodness.

Ancient India

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

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

John Wesley

We ought to do good to others as simply and as naturally
as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes
season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

Marcus Aurelius

The refuge from pessimism is the
good men and women at any time
existing in the world, --they keep
faith and happiness alive.

Charles E. Norton

Know all the good that individuals find,
Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in these three words--Health, Peace, and Competence.

Alexander Pope

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action
by stealth and to have it found out by accident.

Charles Lamb

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

J.M. Barrie

She tended to be impatient with that sort of intellectual who,
for all his brilliance, has never been able to arrive at the simple conclusion
that to be reasonably happy you have to be reasonably good.

Carolyn Kizer

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

Thomas Carlyle

That best portion of good people's lives,
Their little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

William Wordsworth

Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise
of others, but from doing something worthwhile.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell

Waste no more time arguing what
a good person should be. Be one.

Marcus Aurelius

To me, one of the proofs that there is a moral governance in the universe
is the fact that when people and governments work intelligently
and far-sightedly for the good of others, they achieve their own prosperity, too.

Barbara Ward

All that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful,
all that is beneficent, be it great or small,
be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as supernatural,
moral as well as material, comes from God.

John Henry Newman

Morality has been conceived up to the
present in a very narrow spirit, as
obedience to a law, as inner struggle
between opposite laws. As for me, I declare
that when I do good I obey no one, I fight
no battle and win no victory. The cultivated
person has only to follow the delicious incline
of his or her inner impulses. Be beautiful
and then do at each moment whatever
your heart may inspire you to do. This is
the whole of morality.

Ernest Renan

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Goodwill to others. . . helps build you up. It is good for your body.
It makes your blood purer, your muscles stronger,
and your whole form more symmetrical in shape.
It is the real elixir of life.

Prentice Mulford

If you have not often felt the joy of doing a kind act, you have neglected much, and most of all yourself.

A. Neilen

Do things for others and you'll find you self-consciousness evaporating like morning dew.

Dale Carnegie

Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them.

Madame de Stael

Goodwill is the mightiest practical force in the universe.

Charles F. Dole

While I crawl upon this planet I think myself obliged to do
what good I can, in my narrow domestic spheres, to my
fellow creatures, and to wish them all the good I cannot do.

Lord Chesterfield

If one is to do good one must do it in the minute particulars.
General good is the plea of the hypocrite, the flatterer and the scoundrel.

William Blake

Those who wait to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
Life is made up of little things. True greatness consists in
being great in the little things.

Samuel Johnson

Goodness Knows

Goodness knows that sometimes the greatest thing
in the world is a smile from a child,
So Goodness laughs a lot.

Goodness knows that it's easier to break a child than to mend one,
So Goodness handles with care.

Goodness knows that everyone deserves a second chance,
And sometimes a third and fourth chance, too.

Goodness knows that we all need friends in this world,
So Goodness is determined to be friendly.

Goodness knows that only people count,
So Goodness never counts out people.

Goodness knows that life is sometimes lonely,
But we are never alone.

And when the sorrows of life are left unexplained,
it's still not too much to bear,
For we can trust that Goodness knows.

--unattributed

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It is within my power either to serve God, or not to serve him.
Serving him I add to my own good and the good of the whole
world. Not serving him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the
world of that good, which was in my power to create.

Lev Tolstoy