Quotes & Sayings About Having A Good Heart

America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice. — Thomas Paine

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Christian joy isn't always laughing, always having a good, hilarious time. Christian joy is the deep, settled peace that comes to live within your heart when you know that the really important things are all right. — David Jeremiah

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective. — Irving Penn

I hated God for giving me a heart. What good were they? Hearts? Having one got me exactly where? — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humour?' said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. 'The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.'
'With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellow pull you ... — George Eliot

It's good to have things that you love. They keep you grounded, make you realise how much you've got to lose.
It's good to love people. But if you don't have anyone you can truly give your heart to, then having something that means the world to you can often act as a good stand-in — Dorothy Koomson

"Oh, ancient god, whatever your name," whispered Ahmed. "Help this lost son of a good father, this evil boy who meant no harm but slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray from his heart, ignored his mother, and did not hold his family in great esteem. For all this I know I must suffer. But here in the midst of silence, at the desert's heart, where even the wind knows not my name? Must I die so young? Am I to be forgotten without having been?" — Ray Bradbury

You probably can't imagine there being a glory in your life, let alone one that the Enemy fears. But remember
things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. You probably believed that your heart was bad too. I pray that fog of poison gas from the pit of hell is fading away in the wind of God's truth. And there is more. Not only does Christ say to you that your heart is good, he invites you now out of the shadows to unveil your glory. You have a role you never dreamed of having ... — John Eldredge

Why should I keep myself so safe?" he asked her, but he was almost asking himself. What is there in my life worth preserving? With a good wife back there in the mountains, serviceable as an old spoon, dry in the heart from having been scared of marriage since she was six? With three children so shy of their father, the Prince of the Arjikis, that they will hardly come near him? With a careworn clan moving here, moving there, going through th same disputes, herding the same herds, as thy have done for five hundred years? And me, with a shallow and undirected mind, no artfulness in word or habit, no especial kindness toward the world? What is there that makes my life worth preserving?
"I love you," said Elphaba.
"So that's that then, and that's it," he answered her and himself. "And I love you. So I promise to be careful. — Gregory Maguire

Prayer is the superabundance of the heart. It is brim-full and running over with love and praise, as once it was with Mary, when the Word took root in her body. So too, our heart breaks out into a Magnificat. Now the Word has achieved its 'glorious course' (2 Thess. 3:1): it has gone out from God and been sown in the good soil of the heart. Having now been chewed over and assimilated, it is regenerated in the heart, to the praise of God. It has taken root in us and is now bearing its fruit: we in our turn utter the Word and send it back to God. We have become Word; we are prayer. — Andre Louf

It's really good to be able to think about past loves without having a pit in my stomach, or cringing or feeling heart-broken, or like they hate you. Don't you think? — Winona Ryder

Endeavour to serve with such good will and attention to the interest of your employers, that they know they are blessed in having gotten such a good servant, one who serves, not with eye-service as a man-pleaser, but in simplicity of heart as a Christian.
- Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant — Julie Klassen

Having three daughters, it is important for me to set a good example and teach them to make decisions that are healthy for your heart no matter what age you are. — Martina Mcbride

A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality - and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing - it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street. — George Carlin

The gospel of submission, commitment, decision, and victorious living is not good news about what God has achieved but a demand to save ourselves with God's help. Besides the fact that Scripture never refers to the gospel as having a personal relationship with Jesus nor defines faith as a decision to ask Jesus to come into our heart, this concept of salvation fails to realize that everyone has a personal relationship with God already: either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified coheir with Christ and adopted child of the Father. — Michael S. Horton

Love is kind. Kindness is saying kind words that compliment, empower and encourage. It's making every effort to make the other person feel good about him or herself. It's about being thoughtful, tender and having a big heart towards each other. It's showing concern when the other person is hurting, sad or exhibiting some other kind of negative disposition. It's about giving to each other by virtue of our time, possessions, blessings, gifts and everything else that's good. — Tricia-Anne Y. Morris

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages that moved him:
"He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others ...
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ... — Jon Krakauer

On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers. — George Eliot

I turned fifty and decided to take a break. After twenty-five years of working, it seemed like a good idea. Honestly, I was feeling depleted. I still cared about my career and realized, amid a worsening economic climate, that I was lucky to have one. But that appreciation felt more lodged in my head than my heart. One day, United Airlines sent me a card, along with some new luggage tags, offering congratulations on having flown 2 million miles. Quick arithmetic translated all those zeroes into the equivalent of flying from one side of the country to the other every single day - Sundays, holidays, birthdays, sick or well - for more than two years. Maybe the card from United should have offered condolences. It all added up to an abiding fatigue. And a question: Did I want to fly 2 million more miles over the next twenty-five years of my life? Was I having a low-grade midlife crisis? I had no red sports car, reckless affair, — Marc Freedman

Macaulay, teaches us in a passage that the politicians of all Latin countries ought to learn by heart. After having shown all the good that can be accomplished by laws which appear from the point of view of pure reason a chaos of absurdities and contradictions, he compares the scores of constitutions that have been engulphed in the convulsions of the Latin peoples with that of England, and points out that the latter has only been very slowly changed part by part, under the influence of immediate necessities and never of speculative reasoning — Gustave Le Bon

And I mean, if there is a God it's probably a good idea to believe in him. But if there isn't a God, then we're just an accident of nature, a virus, pond scum gone berserk, and it won't matter one way or another if I believe or not because who cares?
And so if it doesn't matter, then I choose to believe. There's something mindful about it, about the universe having a heart, us being watched over, maybe life and everything meaning something. — Martine Leavitt

I believe in having a more open mind and including others who don't share your faith and having dialogue with them. And just having a pure heart and being a good person can bring you closer to God. Because once you believe in one particular religion fully and not others, that requires you to start disliking people who don't share your views. — Ishmael Beah

Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressivee
that's what's good for you if you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life
live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition. — Tennessee Williams

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains. — Anton Chekhov

I've gotten convinced that there's something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn't have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent ... Talent's just an instrument. It's like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn't. I'm not saying I'm able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. — David Foster Wallace

He[Tom] read from the Almenak."'The song that the Vigil Snake sings is in fact one immensely long word; the longest in the ancient language of the species. It is so long that an individual can sing it for a lifetime and never come to the end of it.'"
"That sounds like a Kleppism to me," Geneva said. "How would they ever learn it?"
"Good question," said Tom. "Maybe they're born with it, like a migration instinct?"'
"Born with a song,"said Geneva.
Tom smiled. "Yes. Don't you like that idea?"
"Liking it and having it be true aren't the same thing, Tom."
"Huh. Sometimes you need to let things strike your heart and not your head, Geneva. — Clive Barker

Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel ... You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs. — Elizabeth Moon

My belief is that the various religious traditions have great potential to increase compassion, the sense of caring for one another, and the spirit of reconciliation. However, I believe that a human being, without religious faith, can be a very good person - sincere, a good heart, having a sense of concern for others - without belief in a particular religious faith. — Dalai Lama

You will lose someone you can't live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp. — Anne Lamott

The undivided heart is a good thing, as long as you love somebody. In fact, a divided heart that loves someone is better than an undivided heart that loves nobody
the latter would actually be undivided egoism. It would mean having one's heart full, but with the most corrupting thing there is: oneself. Of this type of virgin and celibate, unfortunately none too rare, Charles Peguy has rightly said: Because they do not belong to someone else, they think they belong to God. Because they love no one else, they think that they love God. — Raniero Cantalamessa

I am sorry for your disappointment,' he continued, glancing into her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the conviction, 'A tie has begun to unite us.' Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in each other's thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect. — Thomas Hardy

He has spoken blasphemy." This was a wrong charge to bring - for Pilate, having his superstition again aroused - is even more afraid to put him to death. And he comes out again, and says, "I find no fault in Him." What a strong contest between good and evil in that man's heart! But they cried out again, "If you let this man go you are not Caesar's friend." They hit the mark this time, and he yields to their clamor. He brings forth a basin of water, and he washes his hands before them all, and he says, "I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it." A poor way of escaping! That water could not wash the blood from his hands, though their cry did bring the blood on their heads - "His blood be on us, and on our children. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There is a twofold knowledge of good of which God has made the mind of man capable. The first, that which is merely notional . . . and the other is, that which consists in the sense of the heart, as when the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. In the former is exercised merely . . . the understanding, in distinction from the . . . disposition of the soul. Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. — Timothy Keller

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Guess what, Avery?" "What?" I wondered if he could see how fast my heart was beating beneath my shirt. "Remember how you just said you were having a good time?" Cam lowered his head so that our mouths were scant inches apart. "It's about to get better." "Is it?" He shifted his head and his nose grazed mine. "Oh, yeah." "Are you not going to kiss me again?" His lips tipped up. "That's exactly what I'm going to do. — J. Lynn

Having him hold me like that was the only good thing out of it all, having him hold me and being right there with me. I just wished he could have held me harder and tighter and made the bad feelings, the dirty feelings, go away. But I don't think you can hold a person that tight, so tight that she's in your heart, way inside your skin, being cleaned and warmed by your blood. (11) — Susan Shaw

On having a backup plan: Always a good plan anytime you want to follow your dream - I love writing, acting, and psychiatry - there are crazy people everywhere which means I can take my career anywhere my dream needs to go. — Samantha Steele

I think,' said the little Queen, smiling, 'that your friend must be the richest man in all the world.' 'I am,' returned the Scarecrow; 'but not on account of my money. For I consider brains to be far superior to money, in every way. You may have noticed that if one has money without brains, he cannot use it to advantage; but if one has brains without money, they will enable him to live comfortably to the end of days.' 'At the same time,' declared the Tin Woodman, 'you must acknowledge that a good heart is a thing that brains cannot create, and that money cannot buy. Perhaps, after all it is I who am the richest man in all the world.' 'You are both rich, my friends,' said Ozma gently; 'and your riches are the only riches worth having - the riches of content!' - The Marvellous Land Of Oz by L. Frank Baum pg 192 chapter 24 — L. Frank Baum

Yes, dear reader, that's the other reason we cats purr. Arguably, it's the most important reason: to make you happy. Purring is our V - our way of reminding you that you are loved and special, and that you should never forget how we feel about you, especially when you're vulnerable. What's more, purring is our way of ensuring your good health. Studies show that having a feline companion reduces stress and lowers the blood pressure of humans. Cat owners are significantly less likely to have heart attacks than people who live in a catless world. — David Michie

Having a set of goals is a good thing for many people. But when a goal takes your focus off God and His daily intentions for you, it can cause trouble. Being driven by my plans can shift the focus of my heart from following God and being open to His unfolding invitations, to following only that which leads me closer to my desires. For me, I started falling into a trap of making plans each day around what I wanted to see happen. Anything that wasn't part of my plan became a distraction and an unwelcome interruption. — Lysa TerKeurst

It's important to preach like there's a broken heart on every pew. That's always been a phrase that stuck with me. Not everybody is having a tough time, but you can bet your buck that there's a good tenth of your church that's going through a hard season. There really is a broken heart on every pew. — Max Lucado

She'd just poured herself another cup of coffee, when Jack walked in. He smiled when he saw her, and her heart did a little flip. "Good morning, beautiful. How did you sleep?" She felt heat in her cheeks. "I slept well, thank you. Thanks for staying with me. Did you get any sleep in that chair?" "Oh, yeah." He reached for a coffee cup. "I can sleep pretty much anywhere - a benefit of having served with the Rangers. If I get five hours a night, I'm good. — Pamela Clare

Watch well each separate citizen, Lest having in his heart of hearts A secret spear, one still may come Saluting you with cheerful face, And utter with a double tongue The feigned good wishes of his wary mind. — Solon

I've never read anything about heroin where, yeah, it's a good experience, and you can do it for 20 years and enjoy it, like having a cold beer. It doesn't work that way with heroin. — Ace Frehley

If you're having fun, enjoy it. If you're angry, get angry. And when you want to cry, go ahead and cry your heart out. You'll feel a lot better after a good cry. And then you'll be able to laugh again. — Daisuke Moriyama

The two chief causes of error in our relations with another person are, having ourselves a good heart, or else being in love with the other person. — Marcel Proust

We've always used stories as a way to pass on our history, as a way to explain things in life that we don't understand. We use them to make us feel connected to everything around us, and to help us escape to another time or place.
Bookshops across the world are full of these stories.
From travelling booksellers and undercover bookshops, to pop-up stalls and community hubs, walking into a good bookshop is like walking into another zone.These places are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret-keepers. They are dragon-tamers, dream-catchers, fact-finders and safe places. They are full of infinite possibilities, and tales worth taking home.
Because whether we're in the middle of the desert or in the heart of a city, on the top of a mountain or on an underground train: having good stories to keep us company can mean the whole world. — Jen Campbell

Really, how much of one's life is made up of these private incidents; how submerged one is. You know, for example, that you will recover from a broken heart, but somehow that piece of information, that factoid, never arrives at the soul or the brain or the nervous system, yes, the nervous system, where it might do some good. But if you know you're going to be all right, why then do you suffer so? To get there. To get where you know you are going to get to anyway. How pathetic, then, to feel about having arrived. I survived, you say. Yes, but what else would you do? No one dies from love. Come, come. — David Gilmour

Me? Oh, intellectually I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy penis, a lively intelligence, and the courage to say 'shit!' in front of a lady. — D.H. Lawrence

Because whether we're in the middle of the desert or in the heart of a city, or the top of a mountain or on an underground train: having good stories to keep us company means the whole world. — Jen Campbell