Quotes & Sayings About Goodness Of Man

A man who has trained himself in goodness come to have certain direct intuitions about character, about the relations between human beings, about his own position in the world
intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the average sensual man.. — Aldous Huxley

Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him ... Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness ... And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself. — Corrie Ten Boom

Man is not satisfied with just being man. He wants to be everything, all creatures, and still remain himself. Man has unfathomable depths to his goodness and his evil, his intelligence and his ignorance
he is a dark region of wells and wishes to drink at them all.'
O-kolkol — Garry Douglas Kilworth

My longing was for Russia ... Not Soviet Russia. But nineteenth-century Russia, the Russia of Dostoevsky's saintly prostitutes and Alyosha; of Tolstoy's Pierre; and Aksionov, the sufferer in "God Sees the Truth But Waits." A country where the characters in books were allowed to ask one another the questions: How must I live to be happy? What is goodness? Why does man suffer? What is to be done? — Guy Vanderhaeghe

Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life. — Kahlil Gibran

The Bible alone gives a true and faithful account of man. It does not flatter him as novels and romances do; it does not conceal his faults and exaggerate his goodness, it paints him just as he is. — J.C. Ryle

The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good. — Thomas Hobbes

You're a good man," Fang said. "You're the last good man in this whole town. All the good that could be squeezed out of this forsaken place was used to make you. That's why you're so small, my friend: there just wasn't that much left." Fang laughed. "and that's why you can see us, you know, and nobody else can. You see everybody, even that lumberjack. — Daniel Wallace

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. There is a plant he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart. — Michael Ondaatje

The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, who produces these agonies begins the formation of the Son God in the life. — Oswald Chambers

Prayer is so mighty an instrument that no one ever thoroughly mastered all its keys. They sweep along the infinite scale of man's wants and God's goodness. — Hugh Miller

The discrimination between good and evil is in man's soul. Every man can judge that for himself, because in every man is the sense of admiration of beauty. Happiness only lies in thinking or doing that which one considers beautiful. Such an act becomes a virtue or goodness. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Son, never trust a man who doesn't drink because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl. — James Crumley

When irrational terror takes to itself the fiat of moral goodness somebody has to die ... No man lives who has not got a panic button, and when it is pressed by the clean white hand of moral duty, a certain murderous train is set in motion. — Arthur Miller

Like some wondrous birds out of fairy tales, books sang their songs to me and spoke to me as though communing with one languishing in prison; they sang of the variety and richness of life, of man's audacity in his strivings towards goodness and beauty. — Maxim Gorky

Goodness & love are as real as their terrible opposites, and, in truth, far more real, though I say this mindful of the enormous evils ... But love is the final reality; and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed of wisdom. — Sheldon Vanauken

There is one way, then, in which a man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul - if in life he has abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do more harm than good, and has devoted himself to the pleasures of acquiring knowledge, and so by decking his soul not with a borrowed beauty but with its own - with self-control, and goodness, and courage, and liberality, and truth - has fitted himself to await his journey in the next world. — Socrates

The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim. — Lord Chesterfield

One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. Yes: you led them there, and yet you can smile, as you are smiling now. And — Oscar Wilde

He was a man in the prime of his life, his fifties ... broad forehead, aquiline nose, penetrating gaze, the very soul of rectitude and goodness. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Keep doing good deeds long enough and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself. — Louis Auchincloss

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man. — Barbara Walters

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The Church makes no man less free than he was before. But we chiefly value freedom in order to give it away; every man who loves surrenders his freedom, whether his passion be the love of a woman, the love of a cause, or the love of God ... Hence: Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Everyone wants the things that only a love of God will bring to him, but most men today seek them in the wrong places. That is why no one comes to God without a revolution of the spirit; he must stop seeking his good in Godlessness. — Fulton J. Sheen

He had had a beautiful and eager young wife and another man had taken her away from him and had fathered his child, and all he had done was to walk away, leaving her in possession of everything he owned, and crawl into a hole in the slums and lie there like a wounded animal and let his intellect bleed away into pious drivel and his strength bleed away into weakness. And he had been good. But his goodness had told me nothing except that I could not live by it. My new father, however, had not been good. He had cuckolded a friend, betrayed a wife, taken a bride, driven a man, though unwittingly, to death. But he had done good. — Robert Penn Warren

I might have known better, nothing is what everybody wants, the world runs on that law. Personally, if I could, I would instigate Meat-Axe Day, and out of the goodness of my heart I would whack your head off with a couple of others. Every man should be allowed one day and a hatchet just to ease his heart. — Djuna Barnes

This ignorance and this crushing of liberty are diligently promoted by the teaching of very many blind pastors, who stir up and urge the people to a zeal for these things, praising them and puffing them up with their indulgences, but never teaching faith. Now I would advise you, if you have any wish to pray, to fast, or to make foundations in churches, as they call it, to take care not to do so with the object of gaining any advantage, either temporal or eternal. You will thus wrong your faith, which alone bestows all things on you, and the increase of which, either by working or by suffering, is alone to be cared for. What you give, give freely and without price, that others may prosper and have increase from you and your goodness. Thus you will be a truly good man and a Christian. For what to you are your goods and your works, which are done over and above for the subjection of the body, since you have abundance for yourself through your faith, in which God has given you all things? — Martin Luther

There is for a free man no occupation more worthy and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honor the infinite wisdom and goodness of God. — John Ray

Here's the problem: when every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all. Why should I stop sleeping with my girlfriend when there will still be lust in my heart? Why pursue holiness when even one sin in my life means I'm Osama bin Hitler in God's eyes? Again, it seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Lands End catalog shouldn't dare exercise church discipline ont he young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we've cheapened God's goodness. — Kevin DeYoung

To make a good man, God has to use all of his skill. Some of the goodness of God himself goes into such a man. And when the man is ready to take his place on the earth, God must feel the pride that I feel when I look at the rug I am weaving, at the strands that bind closely together and knot and make a pattern, and at the beauty of the colours. Such a long day's work to make a good man! And yet, one bullet that takes a second to speed through the air and strike a man will kill him in an instant. How can God forgive such a thing? And yet He can, so it is said, for His heart is great and His forgiveness infinite, if the sinner repents. But I am not God and I cannot forgive the man who killed my brother. — Najaf Mazari

A good man will find that there is goodness in the world; an honest man will find that there is honesty in the world; and a man of principle will find principle and integrity in the hearts
of others. — Albert Pike

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds advantage to himself. — Immanuel Kant

Survival in scarcity dictates nastiness with a rival clan, but also dictates goodness towards our own clan whose support is vital to acquire or defend the necessary scarcities.

Man's nastiness or goodness is not his fault or merit;
They both create the vital coping mechanism to his environment of scarcity. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right. — James Anthony Froude

Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its goodness. — Albert Camus

Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man. a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth -- and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. Great orators, great soldiers, great lawyers, often use their gifts for a most unholy cause. We meet to pay a tribute of love and respect to Robert G. Ingersoll because he used his matchless power for the good of man.

{Darrow's eulogy for Ingersoll at his funeral} — Clarence Darrow

Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does. — Emma Goldman

The feeling of love - is a fervent desire of goodness to a man. — Simon Soloveychik

My fellow Minnesotans join me in mourning the loss of America's 40th President and celebrating the life of a man who personified both the greatness and goodness of America. — Jim Ramstad

Every morning most of the people wake up alive than dead, so I do have a faith there is still some goodness left in the man. — Amit Kalantri

Let it stand, therefore, as an indubitable truth, which no engines can shake, that the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design any thing but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure, and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a show of goodness, their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit, their soul inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness. — John Calvin

The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures. — Thomas Paine

Spider-Man has always been a symbol of goodness and doing the right thing and looking after your fellow man. — Andrew Garfield

Perhaps there simply is no grain of goodness in the heart of man, waiting to be brought to the light, — Paul Murray

Prophecy of Balance (Year of the Cat)

"There must be balance," Source repeated,
"For mankind to flourish on the Earth-Throne he's seated."

His life is a gift from the gods, they created,
And the power to wield choice, but the outcome is weighted.

Seeing the harm and chaos humans manifest,
Wore heavily upon the goodness within their immortal breast.

But the gods disagreed, and two groups they split,
Each one possessing their own talent and wit.

One side fights for freedom of Man's soul,
But the other wants slavery, and Man to control.

So Source cried, "Enough! Now Observers will be sent,
To assist with human minds you've cleverly bent!"

For balance, the pendulum won't sway too far to one side,
And Universal Laws each god must abide.

The gods agreed, but did not stop with their plan,
To influence mankind as much as they can. — Kendi Thompson

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. — Charles Dickens

He who believes in goodness has the essence of all faith. He is a man of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows. — James Freeman Clarke

GraceQuest is a gripping story of one man's (and his family's) struggle with tremendous weakness and pain, but it is also a narrative theodicy
defense of God's goodness in spite of the undeniable reality of evil ... This is an honest and hard-hitting book about God's grace in and through tremendous loss of health and strength. Readers will find hope and help here if they are open to its message about the God-given 'strength to suffer well.' — Roger E. Olson

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain, too much love drives a man insane. You broke my will, but what a thrill. Goodness gracious, great balls of fire. — Jerry Lee Lewis

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Thus it was up to God, to Him alone
in His own ways - by one or both, I say -
to give man back his whole life and perfection.
But since a deed done is more prized the more
it manifests within itself the mark
of the loving heart and goodness of the doer,
the Everlasting Love, whose seal is plain
on all the wax of the world was pleased to move
in all His ways to raise you up again.
There was not, nor will be, from the first day
to the last night, an act so glorious
and so magnificent, on either way.
For God, in giving Himself that man might be
able to raise himself, gave even more
than if he had forgiven him in mercy.
All other means would have been short, I say,
of perfect justice, but that God's own Son
humbled Himself to take on mortal clay.
-Paradiso, Canto VII — Dante Alighieri

He looked with horror round the room: nobody could say he hadn't done right to get away from this, to commit any crime ... When the man opened his mouth he heard his father speaking, that figure in the corner was his mother: he bargained for his sister and felt no desire ... He turned to Rose, 'I'm off,' and felt the faintest tinge of pity for goodness which couldn't murder to escape. — Graham Greene

What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly ... No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't chose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not know what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered ... But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union
what pieces life took out of you. — Elizabeth Strout

Y. I told them to admire us for the hope we still have
that there is enough goodness in man to use the omnipotence science has
given him to ennoble his life on earth instead of degrading it. Self government,
through dangers and distortions and failures, is the American
cause. Faith in self government, when all is said and done, is faith in the
eventual goodness of man — John Dos Passos

Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold, but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp is of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the seasons with him from the south. — Henry Ward Beecher

It's not greed and ambition that makes wars
it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. — Paddy Chayefsky

Nobody ever got anything from God on the grounds that he deserved it. Haven fallen, man deserves only punishment and death. So if God answers prayer it's because God is good. From His goodness, His lovingkindness, His good-natured benevolence, God does it! That's the source of everything. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

There is a great deal we never think of calling religion that is still fruit unto God, and garnered by Him in the harvest. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, goodness. I affirm that if these fruits are found in any form, whether you show your patience as a woman nursing a fretful child, or as a man attending to the vexing detail of a business, or as a physician following the dark mazes of sickness, or as a mechanic fitting the joints and valves of a locomotive; being honest true besides, you bring forth truth unto God. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

God, Who is by nature good and dispassionate, loves all men equally as His handiwork. But He glorifies the virtuous man because in his will he is united to God. At the same time, in His goodness he is merciful to the sinner and by chastising him in this life brings him back to the path of virtue. Similarly, a man of good and dispassionate judgment also loves all men equally. He loves the virtuous man because of his nature and the probity of his intention; and he loves the sinner, too, because of his nature and because in his compassion he pities him for foolishly stumbling in darkness. — Maximus The Confessor

One entry was entitled: "About God":
"This thought has been ascribed to Voltaire: If God did not exist, mankind would have invented Him. I find more truth in the reverse: If there really is a God, then we should seek to forget Him, to raise up men who will to do good for goodness' sake, not out of fear of punishment for their bad deeds. How can someone give alms to a poor man with a clean heart when he believes, and has an interest in believing, that there is a God who keeps score in heaven, who looks down and nods in approval? — Henrik Pontoppidan

It is only from the belief of the goodness and wisdom of a supreme being, that our calamities can be borne in the manner which becomes a man. — Henry MacKenzie

A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a Prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case — Niccolo Machiavelli

The way of a man's heart will be foreshadowed by what goodness lies in him - coming from above, and from around; but a way foreshadowed is not a way made. — Donald G. Mitchell

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The sage of Nazareth may satisfy those who have never faced the problem of evil in their own lives; but to talk about an ideal to those who are under the thralldom of sin is a cruel mockery. Yet if Jesus was merely a man like the rest of men, then an ideal is all that we have in Him. Far more is needed by a sinful world. It is small comfort to be told that there was goodness in the world, when what we need is goodness triumphant over sin. But goodness triumphant over sin involves an entrance of the creative power of God, and that creative power of God is manifested by the miracles. Without the miracles, the New Testament might be easier to believe. But the thing that would be believed would be entirely different from that which presents itself to us now. Without the miracles we should have a teacher; with the miracles we have a Savior. — J. Gresham Machen

For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. — Thomas Mann

If I had to choose between putting a saloon or a liberal church on a corner, I'd choose the saloon every time. People who drink up the pay check in the saloon are less likely to become Pharisees, thinking that they don't need the Great Physician, than those who weekly swill the soporific doctrine of man's goodness. — Jay Adams

God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures, and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of his one and utterly simple essence. — Robert Bellarmine

In the sense of Lewis, I am a moderately 'good man'".

~R. Alan Woods [2012] — R. Alan Woods

The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God. — Gregory David Roberts

Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use - that is our good use - of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right? — Socrates

Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight. — Thomas Aquinas

He intrigued her. Powerful men, in her experience, were usually not so full of doubt. Kuni was consumed by the desire to do good for others, but uncertain what "good" might be and whether he was the right man for the job.
Kuni was the sort of man, Risana realized, who, rather than deceive himself, was so full of self-doubt that he could not longer see himself — Ken Liu

I love Frank Capra. He believed in the goodness of people and one man's ability to fight and often triumph. — Tom Shadyac

Sebastian," Katarina said, turning to her nephew. "You've grown."
"It happens," Sebastian quipped, flashing her his usual lopsided grin.
"Goodness," she said with smile, "you'll be a danger to the ladies soon."
Harry very nearly rolled his eyes. Sebastian had already made conquests of nearly all the girls in the village near Hesslewhite. He must give off some sort of scent, because the females positively fell at his feet.
It would have been appalling, except that the girls couldn't all dance with Sebastian. And Harry was more than happy to be the nearest man standing when the smoke cleared. — Julia Quinn

No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. — George Eliot

A good man enlarges the term of his own existence. — Martial

The modern instinct is that if the heart of man is evil, there is nothing that remains good. But the older feeling was that if the heart of man was ever so evil, there was something that remained good
goodness remained good. — G.K. Chesterton

When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, and goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. — Jason Evert

No hell will frighten men away from sin; no dread of prospective misery; only goodness can cast hell out of any man, and set up the kingdom of heaven within. — Hugh Reginald Haweis

Racism is not simply about one man's irrational hatred of another but his self-hatred, doubting his own moral goodness and purpose. — Michael R. French

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata
of creatures that worked like machines
would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free. — C.S. Lewis

I am here because I am the one that must love Peter so much that he can feel worthy, worthy enough to bear to let the goodness of Young Valentine flow into him, making him whole, making him Ender. Not Ender the Xenocide and Andrew the Speaker for the Dead, guilt and compassion mingled in one shattered, broken, unmendable heart, but Ender Wiggin the four-year-old boy whose life was twisted and broken when he was too young to defend himself. Wang-mu was the one who could give Peter permission to become the man that child should have grown up to be, if the world had been good. — Orson Scott Card

A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step downward, is a step upward. The man who renounceshimself, comes to himself. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

-the apartment had been directly in the sight line of a Serb sniper across the river. Teta-Jozefina was a devout Catholic, but she somehow managed to believe in essential human goodness, despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary surrounding her. She felt that the sniper was essentially a good man because during the siege, she said, he had often shot over her and her husband's heads to warn them that he was watching and that they shouldn't move so carelessly in their own apartment. — Aleksandar Hemon

Dear goodness, the things I learned. I did not want my world disturbed, but I wanted to crush the man who's trying to preserve it for me. I wanted to stamp out all the people like him. I guess it's like an airplane: they're the drag and we're the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we're nose-heavy, too much of them and we're tail heavy
it's a matter of balance. I can't beat him, and I can't join him
— Harper Lee

sweetness on the tongue and a promise of scent on the night air. It was sensual in the best meaning of that word, saturating every sense at once, so that the flesh was known, finally, as a thing of such goodness that man blessed his Creator from morning to night for having made him. Here in this medieval town where once an extraordinary little fellow had burst forth with songs to God, as a passionate lover speaks to his bride, here the restoration of man to his own true home was no longer the dream of saints. It was the wedding feast. It was a word made flesh. — Michael D. O'Brien

Goodness knows, I tried. But I think it's virtually impossible for the right kind of man to be married to a movie star. — Joan Fontaine

Of course I recognized it. How could I not, for I had read it goodness knows how many times. 'Jane Eyre,' I said wonderingly.
'You recognized it? Yes, it is. I asked a man in a library. It's by Charlotte someone. She had a lot of sisters, apparently. — Diane Setterfield

Yea, I thought it impossible that ever I should attain to so much goodness of heart, as to thank God that He had made me a man. Man indeed is the most noble by creation, of all creatures in the visible world; but by sin he has made himself the most ignoble. The beasts, birds, fishes, etc. I blessed their condition; for they had not a sinful nature; they were not obnoxious to the wrath of God; they were not to go to hell-fire after death; I could therefore have rejoiced, had my condition been as any of theirs. — John Bunyan

The second that you make a man truly free, he becomes truly good. And it is only that individual who has lost his belief in himself and his own pride of goodness and his own pride of being and his own honor who is dangerous. — L. Ron Hubbard

Someone should keep reminding Mr. Average Man that he was born free, divine, strong; uncrushable by fate, society, or hell itself; and that he is a child of God, equal heir to all the bounties of God; and that goodness is riches, kindness is power, and freedom is glory. Above all, every man is born with an inner capacity to take him as far as his imagination can dream or envision-providing he is free to dream and envision. — Frank Capra

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal. — Charles Dickens

If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer." This — William Somerset Maugham

So when a 'heterosexual' man learns to appreciate the noble woman of Proverbs 31, regardless of her looks, he is transcending his sexuality, not EXPRESSING it. Jacob labored fourteen years for Rachel 'beautiful in form and beautiful of face.' But Leah of the 'tender eyes' (Gen. 29:17) proved a much better and nobler wife. Perhaps a 'homosexual' man - a man whose venereal desires are focused more on men than on women - would not have been distracted by Rachel's looks and could have seen Leah's goodness and nobility from the beginning, as Jacob did not (29:30f). Biblically, the dwindling of such desire is not grounds for divorce (Mal. 2:14-16). — Jonathan Mills

I will keep faith with death in my heart ... For the sake of goodness, for the sake of love, Let no man's heart be ruled by death ... The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the .emotions, as the inviolable condition of life. — Thomas E. Mann

For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth then formerly we have been acquainted with. — John Winthrop

Three things are necessary to make every man great,every nation great1.Conviction of the powers of goodness.2.Absence of jealousy and suspicion.3.Helping all who are trying to be and do good. — Swami Vivekananda

Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity. — Xunzi

Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death. — William Ellery Channing