Quotes & Sayings About Niceness

You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion. — Mort Walker

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno! — E. M. Forster

Nice is such a rip-off. — Ntozake Shange

I'm rather a cynic, I suppose. I do not believe in the niceness of humanity. — George MacDonald Fraser

Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen. — David Levithan

nice people like to preserve their niceness. Years — Agatha Christie

It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness. — Roger Scruton

[I]t would be a niceness that was enforced leniently, patiently and gracefully, with the sort of unflappable self-certainty [they] couldn't help displaying when all its statistics proved that it really was doing the right thing. — Iain M. Banks

She's nice when it suits her. That doesn't mean she's nice. — Rachel Caine

You know how ESPN works; they'll throw themselves into a frenzy over Tebow's white bread lame ass niceness and then vilify Johnny Football just 'cause he rages now and then. — Dabo Swinney

I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does. — Andy Rooney

They were nice in a useless sort of way, which is, after all, the only way to be truly nice. — Samuel R. Delany

Glasgow was home-made ginger biscuits and Jennifer Lawson dead in the park. It was the sententious niceness of the Commander and the threatened abrasiveness of Laidlaw. It was Milligan, insensitive as a mobile slab of cement, and Mrs Lawson, witless with hurt. It was the right hand knocking you down and the left hand picking you up, while the mouth alternated apology and threat. — William McIlvanney

Kindness is a magical spell - performed by enlightened beings - meant to enchant hearts and lift weary souls that they might fly. — Richelle E. Goodrich

It was difficult for me to understand that, when you're kind to someone in a big city, a lot of the time, they think that you want something. I didn't understand that, all of a sudden, niceness meant that you were trying to get something out of somebody. — Jaime King

It's time to get mad, Michael. Niceness doesn't count for shit! — Armistead Maupin

But Paying It Forward is about spontaneously offering favors, not needing to say yes when someone asks too much of you. And also, it's about kindness rather than niceness. There's a difference. Kindness is spontaneous and real. Niceness just mostly wants to be liked. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

We're not all nice, and there are a lot of levels of ambition and niceness. — Heather Donahue

I turned to Dionysus. "You cured him?"
"Madness is my specialty. It was quite simple."
"But ... you did something nice. Why?"
He raised and eyebrow. "I am nice! I simple ooze niceness, Perry Johansson. Haven't you noticed? — Rick Riordan

It always amazes me how many women like dangerous men. Men who almost from the moment you meet them, you know are bad news. Me, I prefer my men kinder, gentler, nice. Niceness is highly underrated by most people. — Laurell K. Hamilton

You used to get it in your fishnets
Now you only get it in your nightdress
Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness ...
... Remeber when the boys were all electric? — Arctic Monkeys

This is why a woman needs to combine niceness with insistence, a style that Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, calls "relentlessly pleasant."22 This method requires smiling frequently, expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common interests, emphasizing larger goals, and approaching the negotiation as solving a problem as opposed to taking a critical stance.23 Most negotiations involve drawn-out, successive moves, so women need to stay focused ... and smile. — Sheryl Sandberg

One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys still obtusely citing Reagan as their model of "niceness": As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that next time you ask yourself: "What would Reagan do?" People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus . Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps. — Ann Coulter

Niceness, he realised, was not enough, and Love was only part of the rest. You had to have laughter, too. Laughter would make everything come out right in the end, or if it didn't nobody would notice. — Tom Holt

Be nice wont you?" "I am nice, I'm always nice." "But not too nice. I mean don't make a religion out of it, niceness. — David Nicholls

Now there's a girl I don't want to mess with' - or at least, that's what I would think if I had a chronic fear of freakishly nice people. — Nenia Campbell

This desire to learn what the faith is from those who have lived it in the face of being told they are not welcome or worthy is far more than "inclusion." Actually, inclusion isn't the right word at all, because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing "them" to join "us" - like we are judging another group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don't own. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. — Gavin De Becker

We change the world a little each day with our kindness. — Tom Giaquinto

I'm not that nice," I said. People were always telling me how nice I was. You'd think it would be a compliment, but it was amazing how sometimes it just felt like a kinder way of saying "blah." "I just keep my horrible side well hidden. — Hester Browne

Those East Coast rich kids are a different breed, on a fast track to nowhere. Your friends in Seattle are downright Canadian in their niceness. None of you has a cell phone. The girls wear hoodies and big cotton underpants and walk around with tangled hair and smiling, adorned backpacks. Do you know how absolutely exotic it is that you haven't been corrupted by fashion and pop culture? A month ago I mentioned Ben Stiller, and do you remember how you responded? 'Who's that?' I loved you all over again. — Maria Semple

Ellen had always assumed she would marry young and have a relationship like theirs. She thought she was that sort of person. Traditional. Nice. As if nice girls always found nice boys. As if "niceness" was all that was necessary to maintain a relationship. — Liane Moriarty

It is important to be nice. But sometimes niceness can be misconstrued as weak. Should we be nice to everybody? Should we be nice only when others are nice to us? Here are some interesting views about being nice. Read these nice quotes and turn on your niceness. — Dave Barry

niceness was something anyone could be, whether they meant it or not. But goodness was another thing altogether. — Brit Bennett

Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of them. — Hanya Yanagihara

It's a dirty little secret that most New Yorkers are pleasant, thoughtful, patient, and polite. The Chamber of Commerce must work overtime to maintain the surly, off-putting image that is widely believed to define the city. In truth, niceness is nearly epidemic in this town. — Judith Kelman

He was a thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a sparkle of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type. — Virginia Woolf

I'm a nice guy to anyone I meet, until they show me they don't deserve niceness. I'll turn very quickly. But I'm pretty pleasant overall. — Noel Clarke

I'm very nice. I'm nice to everyone who deserves my niceness. -Emmy — Robin Benway

I don't make friends easily, because I think most people are useless idiots. I don't see that as being a flaw on my part. There is no such thing as a "people person"; some people are just better at faking niceness. I put in an effort occasionally. — Ashley Little

You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have coming walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness? — Patrick Ness

I'm not sure that niceness is what we should promote in writers. — Lorrie Moore

Fear and niceness, the handmaids of all women, or more truly, woman its pretty self. — William Shakespeare

I guess that blows your theory, Paige. Niceness trumps art. — Caragh M. O'Brien

For all the talk about the need to be a likable "team player," many people work in a fairly cutthroat environment that would seem to be especially challenging to those who possess the recommended traits. Cheerfulness, upbeatness, and compliance: these are the qualities of subordinates
of servants rather than masters, women (traditionally, anyway) rather than men. After advising his readers to overcome the bitterness and negativity engendered by frequent job loss and to achieve a perpetually sunny outlook, management guru Harvey Mackay notes cryptically that "the nicest, most loyal, and most submissive employees are often the easiest people to fire." Given the turmoil in the corporate world, the prescriptions of niceness ring of lambs-to-the-slaughter. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Is all niceness then or is all buggery? How can a man be forty-five years old and still not know whether all is niceness or buggery? How does one know for sure? — Walker Percy

Imagine the greatness this world would know if kindness were as contagious and enduring as the common cold. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But don't you understand, Amy? You're wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three- That's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which there qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll end up with nothing. — Hanya Yanagihara

You're like, a kick ass ninja of niceness. — H.M. Ward

I believe in kindness and niceness and lots of spiritual things, but the real intellectual rigor and quest of logic is something that I'm afraid takes incredibly hard work and we live in an age in which hard work is if not actively deprecated or denigrated it is run away from or ignored. — Stephen Fry

Over-niceness may be under-niceness. — Samuel Richardson

A woman needs to combine niceness with insistence, a style that Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan, calls relentlessly pleasant — Sheryl Sandberg

There are also two Christianities in the world today. There is (1) the Christianity of the New Testament, and there is (2) the Christianity of accommodation to modernism, egalitarianism, niceness, naturalism, pop psychology, secular humanism, relativism, subjectivism, individualism, "Enlightenment" rationalism or postmodern irrationalism. New converts to the first Christianity are constantly amazed and scandalized by finding many of their clergy to be in love with the second and in fear of the first. — Peter Kreeft

Humility was an offensive characteristic for a God, in the eyes of early non-Christians. How could Christians worship a God who deliberately chose to share in human birth with all its mess and vulnerability and limitation, as well as a shameful death? How can we now worship a God to whom all the unimportant little details of our lives actually matter? How can we respect a God who takes us more seriously than we take ourselves, and yet is not impressed with all our accomplishments? Who loves us equally well, whetherwe succeed or fail? How could it really be that God simply disregards not only our education, our tastes, our industry, our niceness, our worthiness in order to love us? God's greatness we can begin to approach. The sheer humility of God's love is incomprehensible. — Roberta C. Bondi

I had been wading up to my neck in all this niceness for years. I woke up to it, went to sleep in it. I breathed niceness and slowly it was killing me. — Erlend Loe

Nobody can afford to appear more pleasant than they really are! — Phyllis Bottome

There's an openness to his face, an innocence - a certain kind of niceness. It's the niceness that touches my heart the most. — Jenny Han

My niceness has a very low threshold and that little girl just sucked it dry, so don't push me, Olympain. I don't want so much as a single Atlantean stone overturned. Guard it with your life because the next time I come here, that's the price I'm going to demand for your incompetence. (ZT)
Nice talking to you, ZT. I so look forward to your visits. Next time we'll do pastries, 'kay? (Kat) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And being "nice" in the form of feigned sympathy is often equally as unsuccessful. We live in an age that celebrates niceness under various names. We are exhorted to be nice and to respect people's feelings at all times and in every situation. But nice alone in the context of negotiation can backfire. Nice, employed as a ruse, is disingenuous and manipulative. — Chris Voss

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive. — Gavin De Becker

I already made icing. I told you not to buy any."
"Oops," I said, taking another scoop. "Looks like I messed up again. Guess I'll have to eat this."
He glanced toward me, giving a pointed look to the two containers I had set beside me. "All of it?" he asked.
"Maybe if you're nice, I'll share ... But considering you've already met your niceness quote for the year, I wouldn't bet on it. And you can't have any sprinkles."
"There goes my reason for living."
"I thought that was to make me miserable. — Bethany Frenette

SETH: But don't you understand, Amy? You're wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three - that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing. — Hanya Yanagihara

Well, I could never lie to you, Thor. I'm actually the All-Mother's undercover operative in the cause of niceness and puppies, and I'm here on a top-secret spy-type thingie. Shh! Don't tell anyone. — Al Ewing

No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction. — Stefan Molyneux

Cycling has nothing to do with the Tour de France. Racing a bike is a totally different sport than just being into cycling. Cycling is this therapeutic, beautiful mode of transportation where you attach yourself to this machine and it becomes part of you. Then you can go to all of these new places that you weren't able to go before, and that has nothing to do with racing. I'm not a bike racer; I'm a bike rider. I love riding my bike, but I also love testing what I can do on my bike. So, in that regard, I am a racer. But if I had been born in Belgium and I had to race in Belgium all the time, I would've never gotten to the level that I am now, because the racing over there is so stressful. It just takes everything away from the niceness of being able to ride a bike. — Taylor Phinney

This is what happens when nice people are pushed too far. We give too many chances, and so when we've finally had enough, we are well and truly done. When a nice person shuts a door on you, it's shut for good. — Deb Caletti

At times, I suspect that the concept of maturity is maintained by a conspiracy of niceness. — Julian Barnes

If it pains you to discover that a Nice Man can be a crumbum, Tom, it's life you've got to object to, not Percy in particular. — Ellery Queen

I think of part of myself as a very passionate person, but I don't think that comes across. I don't know where it comes from, that reserve or veneer of British niceness. But it doesn't bother me if other people don't spot the passion. I know it's there. — Julie Andrews

(Kindness) is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.
-David Levithan (Every Day) — David Levithan

There is a certain 'niceness' to a friendship where I can be, as they say, myself. But what I really need are relationships in which I will be encouraged to become better than myself. Myself needs to grow a little each day. I don't want to be the myself I was yesterday. I want to be the myself that is developing each day to be more of a Christlike person.3 — Vaughan Roberts

The people of New Zealand are generally terribly nice. Everybody we had met so far had been terribly nice to us. Terribly nice and eager to please. I realised now that all this relentless niceness and geniality to which we had been subjected had got to me rather badly. New Zealand niceness is not merely disarming, it's decapitating as well, and I had come to feel that if Just one more person was pleasant and genial at me I'd hit him. — Douglas Adams

Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else. — Sue Grafton

Cathy's a nice person, in a forceful sort of way. She makes you notice her kindness. Her niceness is writ large, it is her defining quality and she needs it acknowledged. — Paula Hawkins

One thing that I think never goes out of style is just purity. Niceness and purity. And the Muppets have never lost that. Kermit especially is just wide-eyed wonder, unblinking. And he can't blink. Which I think probably helps. — Jason Segel

We've instrumentalized niceness as a way of greasing the social wheels, yet it's often a ruse. We're polite and we don't disagree to get through daily existence with the least degree of friction. But by turning niceness into a lubricant, we've leeched it of meaning. A smile and a nod might signify "Get me out of here!" as much as it means "Nice to meet you." That's — Chris Voss

It is not for us to know who does and does not manage to accept forgiveness, but if the love really never stops, if God really does long for every lost soul, then in principle God regards as forgivable a whole load of stuff we really don't want forgiven, thank you. People who use airliners to murder thousands of office workers, people who strut about Norwegian summer camps stealing the lives of teenagers with careful shots to the head, people who drive over their gay neighbor in their pick-up truck and then reverse and do it again, people who torture children for sexual pleasure: God is apparently ready to rush right in there and give them all a hug, the bastard. We don't want that. We want justice, dammit, if not in this world then in the next. We want God's extra-niceness confined to deserving cases such as, for example, us, and a reliable process of judgment put in place which will ensure that the child-murderers are ripped apart with red-hot tongs. — Francis Spufford

A lot of warm vulgarity is incomparably preferable to a little bit of pinched niceness — Caitlin Thomas

No one liked to get too upset in WA's capital, a genuine hindrance to Perth forging its own identity. Less than two hundred years old, its unremarkable history and unceasing niceness had combined to apparently stupify its populace. Perth was at least two hours behind the Eastern states but everyone knew it was really dragging behind by years. — Dave Franklin

If there's a place for tolerance in racial healing, perhaps it has to do with tolerating my own feelings of discomfort that arise when a person, of any color, expresses emotion not welcome in the culture of niceness. It also has to do with tolerating my own feelings of shame, humiliation, regret, anger, and fear so I can engage, not run. For me, tolerance is not about others, it's about accepting my own uncomfortable emotions as I adjust to a changing view of myself as imperfect and vulnerable. As human. — Debby Irving

Niceness is the psychological armor of the people-pleaser. — Harriet B. Braiker

In order to be accepted, women must compensate for their ambition and strength by being nice. Men don't have to be nearly as much d as women. I do not believe women are natively nicer than men. They may learn that niceness brings rewards and hat names ambition is often punished. They may ingratiate themselves because such behavior is rewarded and a strategy of stealth may lead to better results than being forthright, but even when women are open and direct, they are not always seen or heard. — Siri Hustvedt

Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice. — David Mitchell

Nick can do a pretty good nice, but it's not the real deal. His is a thin, watery nice, a niceness-au-jus drizzled over a great big asshole sandwich. — Melissa DeCarlo

Some girls, of course, can be both popular and nice. But niceness involves treating others as equals [ ... ] — Alexandra Robbins

A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might be even more difficult to save. — C.S. Lewis

I see death and tragedy all the time and nothing makes it worse than when it's totally senseless. All she needed was some niceness, some basic human kindness, and she wouldn't be on her way to the morgue and her parents wouldn't be devastated. It's heartbreaking and so senseless. — Jay Crownover

Kindness is not "niceness." Kindness does not avoid conflict; kindness engages conflict, but with a goal of reconciliation. — Russell D. Moore

Niceness is an overrated quality. Being nice is how a man pays his way into a party if he hasn't the guts to be tough or the class to be brilliant. — Trevanian

You're being nicer to me than I've been to you lately," I said.
"Yes, I am. But then, Hitler was nicer to Poland than you've been to me lately. — Molly Ringle

I know it's sappy, but I bet there's a market for civility and niceness out there that, while probably not as titillating as a junkyard scrap between shirtless adversaries, it'd sure be healthier. — Steven Weber

Don't mistake niceness for weakness. — Jennifer Granholm