The Goodness Of Life Quotes & Sayings

Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges. — Joan D. Chittister

One whose chief regard is for his own mind, and for the divinity within him and the service of its goodness, will strike no poses, utter no complaints, and crave neither for solitude nor yet for a crowd. Best of all, his life will be free from continual pursuing and avoiding. — Marcus Aurelius

To glorify God means to think and act in such a way that the goodness, greatness, and beauty of God are constantly obvious to ourselves and all those around us.
It means to live in such a way that when people see us they think, Thank God for God, if God would create such a life. — Dallas Willard

Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself. — Gwendolyn Brooks

I am overwhelmed by the goodness of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Be sure to forsake, to turn away from, any teaching in the world that will demand of you a "proof of goodness" by the renouncing of earthly joys, pleasures, happiness, possessions! Forget about the creed that tells you, that what you make in this life accounts for nothing in the next one. Life on this Earth is a gift and we do not accept good gifts only to throw them away later on! Make in this life laughter, joy, pleasure, attain good things and give to others good things, too. But never let your aim be to selflessness, for at the end of the day, our responsibilities are to our own selves and to those few whom we love and who truly love us. And holiness? Holiness is happiness, holiness is joy. — C. JoyBell C.

The Christian life is a long and continual tendency of our hearts toward that eternal goodness which we desire on earth. All our happiness consists in thirsting for it. Now this thirst is prayer. Ever desire to approach your Creator, and you will never cease to pray. Do not think it necessary to pronounce many words. — Francois Fenelon

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

Safely connected to my life, and reassured of my essential goodness, I feel at ease, at home, really in the most sublime of homes. [p. 58] — Sylvia Boorstein

Well, life isn't cheap. It's the greatest mystery of any millennium, and television needs to do all it can to broadcast that ... to show and tell what the good in life is all about.
But how do we make goodness attractive? By doing whatever we can do to bring courage to those whose lives move near our own
by treating our 'neighbor' at least as well as we treat ourselves and allowing that to inform everything that we produce.
Who in your life has been such a servant to you? Who has helped you love the good that grows within you? Let's just take ten seconds to think of some of those people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us in life, those who have encouraged us to become who we are tonight - just ten seconds of silence.
No matter where they are, either here or in heaven, imagine how pleased those people must be to know that you thought of them right now. — Fred Rogers

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows — Kelly Armstrong

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

The only life I have left to live is future life. The past is not in my hands to offer or alter. It is gone. Not even God will change the past. All the expectations of God are future expectations. All the possibilities of faith and love are future possibilities. And all the power that touches me with help to live in love is future power. As precious as the bygone blessings of God may be, if He leaves me only with the memory of those, and not with the promise of more, I will be undone. My hope for future goodness and future glory is future grace. — John Piper

[People of faith must] reassure them [atheists] that we share with them the core values of America, that our faith is not inconsistent with their freedom and our mission is not one of intolerance, but one of love ... I stand before you today as a witness to the goodness of God. For me, like you and like my running mate Al Gore, faith provided a foundation, order and purpose in my life. — Joe Lieberman

The writings of latter-day prophets clearly teach that the sorrows and sufferings endured by Adam and Eve upon their leaving the Garden of Eden were ordained by God and were a necessary part of their-and our-earthly experience. President Howard W. Hunter, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught: "We came to mortal life to encounter resistance. It was part of the plan for our eternal progress. Without temptation, sickness, pain, and sorrow, there could be no goodness, virtue, appreciation for well-being, or joy." — Daniel K Judd

Mankind has a divine duty, to be stewardship of the natural resources. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I win not because of my own efforts or my own goodness, but rather through the grace, love, and mercy of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He died so that I might win this game of life and live with Him forever. — Zig Ziglar

After more than two thousand miles on the [Appalachian] trail, you can expect to undergo some personality changes. A heightened affinity for nature infiltrates your life. Greater inner peace. Enhanced self-esteem. A quiet confidence that if I could do that, I can do and should do whatever I really want to do. More appreciation for what you have and less desire to acquire what you don't. A childlike zest for living life to the fullest. A refusal to be embarrassed about having fun. A renewed faith in the essential goodness of humankind. And a determination to repay others for the many kindnesses you have received. — Larry Luxenberg

I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing. — Julia Cameron

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

[T]he strongest defense of the humanities lies not in the appeal to their utility - that literature majors may find good jobs, that theaters may economically revitalize neighborhoods - but rather in the appeal to their defiantly nonutilitarian character, so that individuals can know more than how things work, and develop their powers of discernment and judgment, their competence in matters of truth and goodness and beauty, to equip themselves adequately for the choices and the crucibles of private and public life. — Leon Wieseltier

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

God's grace has nothing to do with any goodness of ours, who we are, what we know, or where we are in life. It has all to do with the nature of Him. — Leslie Haskin

Happiness is not the Achievement of Dreams.
It is the Path to Dreams. — Vineet Raj Kapoor

I am the symbol of peace,
I am the humanity
I am the symbol of goodness
I am the community
I am the symbol of change
I am the light in darkness
I am the symbol of compassion
I am the soul of kindness
I am the symbol of joyful future
I will bring brightness
I am the symbol of unity and harmony
I will bring happiness. — Debasish Mridha

The cycle of God, the good, is broken by a single act of negativity. The cycle of negativity is stopped by choosing the good
not just once, but again and again until it is goodness that prevails in your life and in our world altogether. — John Morton

The intimate space of your personal life should be reserved for amazing, beautiful, radiant souls - good, wholesome and loving people. — Bryant McGill

The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God.
Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father. — John Ortberg Jr.

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here. — Melina Marchetta

Simon had been sent by Barabbas to find out if the Nazarene was a fellow revolutionary, a self-proclaimed messiah, or something else. Simon's heart had been strangely moved by this stranger and he was still trying to figure him out. But the Rabbi remained a mystery to him. The centurion had asked him to heal his servant and Jesus replied that he had not seen such great faith in all of Israel. That was shocking enough, to attribute such goodness to a filthy, unclean stranger to the covenant. But then he said that many such people would come to the feast of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom - in other words, Israelites - would be thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. As an Essene scribe at Qumran, Simon had spent his whole life in rituals of cleanness and separation. — Brian Godawa

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

Well, I've had more than one odd moment, I have, But I have never felt those impulses you have. Soon enough you get your fill of woods and things, I don't really envy birds their wings. How different are the pleasures of the intellect, 1130 Sustaining one from page to page, from book to book, And warming winter nights with dear employment And with the consciousness your life's so lucky. And goodness, when you spread out an old parchment, Heaven's fetched straight down into your study. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world. — Dolly Parton

Here's the core problem we have with the Sermon on the Mount: it isn't that Jesus' teachings are absurd; it's that we don't see the world that Jesus sees. We see a world of injustice and anger and hatred and violence--a world where everything good is in short supply and life itself is fragile. But Jesus saw a world in which his father was in control, in which justice was guaranteed, in which goodness was breaking forth, and in which life itself is without end. And if you see that world through the lens of the gospel, then what Jesus tells us to do and how he informs us to live makes perfect sense. — Skye Jethani

October 1 Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life. Psalm 23:6 God told King Hezekiah he was going to die, but Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and cried out to God. In response, God added fifteen years to the king's life. But no sooner had he recovered than he started sounding as if his close encounter with death came with an automatic doctorate, as if the decision to spare one of God's own has anything to do with loving one person more than another. God cannot love us more or less than He does at this moment. He chooses to heal and not to heal for His own reasons. All His decisions come from His love. But whether He chooses to heal or take us home, His love remains constant. — Beth Moore

Every year, I might almost say every day, that I live, I seem to see more clearly how all the rest and gladness and power of our Christian life hinges on one thing; and that is, taking God at His word, believing that He really means exactly what He says, and accepting the very words in which He reveals His goodness and grace, without substituting others or altering the precise modes and tenses which He has seen fit to use. — Frances Ridley Havergal

If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life. — Leo Tolstoy

May I never forget the goodness of the Lord. — Lailah Gifty Akita

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

It is the noble races that have left behind them the concept 'barbarian' wherever they have gone; even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it and even a pride in it (for example, when Pericles says to the Athenians in his famous funeral oration 'our boldness has gained access to every land and sea, everywhere raising imperishable monuments to its goodness and wickedness). This 'boldness' of noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in its expression, the incalculability, even incredibility of their undertakings - Pericles specially commends the rhathymia of the Athenians - their indifference to and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction, in all the voluptuousness of victory and cruelty - all this came together, in the minds of those who suffered from it, in the image of the 'barbarian,' the 'evil enemy,' perhaps as the 'Goths,' the 'Vandals. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Every aspect of your life is greatly influenced, day in and day out, by the way you imagine life to be. Imagine the best, choose the goodness, and be a source of love and light for all to see.. — Ralph Marston

An eternal life is a life that one lives according to his or her decree to ultimately be a fine human being, agreeing with the concept of goodness, foreseeing the dangers ahead either by prophesies or by anticipation and to serve our Heavenly Father unselfishly. — Anthony Pan

For others the mourning is over. Others would say that whilst one God has died - the God of ontotheology perhaps? - this allows for the good news of a God who is to come, a God who will be better able to gather up and give justice to all the manifold aspirations of human life towards goodness and meaning (and not just to those who are able to fit into a narrow 'religious' framework). — George Pattison

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

If God brings our pets back to life, it wouldn't surprise me. It would be just like Him. It would be totally in keeping with His generous character ... Exorbitant. Excessive. Extravagant in grace after grace. Of all the dazzling discoveries and ecstatic pleasures heaven will hold for us, the potential of seeing Scrappy would be pure whimsy-utterly, joyfully, surprisingly superfluous ... Heaven is going to be a place that will refract and reflect in as many ways as possible the goodness and joy of our great God, who delights in lavishing love on His children. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Our circumstances are not an accurate reflection of God's goodness. Whether life is good or bad, God's goodness, rooted in His character, is the same. — Helen Grace Lescheid

Central to America's rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition with the vision of the goodness and possibilities of every human life. — Mitt Romney

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

Life is an act - most of it, anyway. Get out there today and pretend you're in charge, for goodness' sake. Do you hear me? Lift up your head and pretend." A flicker of a smile passed over her face. "It's the secret to everything. — Kate Alcott

It is not badness, it is the absence of goodness, which, in Art as in Life, is so depressing. — Freya Stark

The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living. — David O. McKay

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. — Henry James

What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

Political parties were established in European public life partly as an inheritance from the Terror, and partly under the influence of British practice. The mere fact that they exist today is not in itself a sufficient reason for us to preserve them. The only legitimate reason for preserving anything is its goodness. The evils of political parties are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: do they contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable? — Simone Weil

He had cast out of heaven his dim star; it had fallen, and its track was lost in the darkness of night. It would never return to the sky again, because life was given only once and never came a second time. If he could have turned back the days and years of the past, he would have replaced the falsity with truth, the idleness with work, the boredom with happiness; he would have given back purity to those whom he had robbed of it. He would have found God and goodness, but that was as impossible as to put back the fallen star into the sky, and because it was impossible he was in despair. — Anton Chekhov

I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone's face. — Xu Zhiyong

I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably ... This truth should be taught to every human being
that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice
how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice. — Fidel Castro

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

It's time to take a deep breath and sink into the love and goodness that scares the ever-living hell out of me. I have to make my life count for something, or I'll be treading through this pain like a coward until I drop. — Steph Campbell

Life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom and beauty, as well as energy and imagination. Our highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible Life. All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes. — Ernest Holmes

The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of love and of generosity and of goodness. It illuminates the picture window of the soul, and we look out upon the world's busy life and become more interested in people than in things. — Thomas S. Monson

It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking, which did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only. — Virginia Woolf

It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. — Pope Benedict XVI

The best of who you are is not from who you have in your life, rather who they helped you become because they loved you. — Shannon L. Alder

There may be no sign of it, no probability of it, no germ of it from which to start, but God is able to make it out of nothing by a word. He does so make it by the word which faith claims. He needs no protoplasm to build His magnificent edifices of worlds. "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." Into the soul that has no basis or remnant of goodness, but is dead in trespasses and sins, He can speak life and holiness. — A.B. Simpson

I think in particular of our need to speak to the hearts of young people, who, despite their constant exposure to messages contrary to the Gospel, continue to thirst for authenticity, goodness and truth. Much remains to be done, particularly on the level of preaching and catechesis in parishes and schools, if the new evangelization is to bear fruit for the renewal of ecclesial life in America. — Pope Benedict XVI

Love is there when one lives in the beauty and goodness of others. — Debasish Mridha

Certainly, goodness and mercy will stay close to me all the days of my life, and I will remain in the LORD'S house for days without end. Psalm 23:5-6 — Linda Washington

All the variety of species of life created be,
By combination of three basic material energy;
- 45 -
These Guna modus operandi of material energy,
They are called tamo, rajo and sattva clearly;
- 46 -
Tamo-guna associated with inertia, ignorance be,
The rajo-guna associated with passion, activity;
- 47 -
Sattva-guna associated with goodness, harmony,
And all three of them associated with thinking truly.
- 48 - — Munindra Misra

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

Laying down what we want to protect or are afraid of losing or are terrified we will never have is not the same thing as losing those things. It is surrendering them. It is opening up our clenched hand around them and allowing God access to them and to us. It is actually saying yes to God for them. Yes to his plan. Yes to his way. It is believing that just as his ways are higher than the heavens are above the earth, so his way for the things we fear is higher. This God of ours is a God of life, of goodness. He is the God of the Resurrection. We lay down our fear. We pick up Jesus. He is the only way we can live beyond fear. He is the Way. — Stasi Eldredge

Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper "One more time" in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality. — L.R. Knost

And now because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn all that is mean; hate all that is false; struggle with all that is impure Live the simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality. — Frederick William Robertson

Thank goodness we don'y meet many people like [Miss Trunchbull] in this world, although they do exist and all of us are likely to come across at least one of them in a lifetime. If you ever do, you should behave as you would if you met an enraged rhinoceros out in the bush
climb up the nearest tree and stay there until it has gone away. — Roald Dahl

Who sings of all of Love's eternity
Who shines so bright
In all the songs of Love's unending spells?
Holy lightning strikes all that's evil
Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
Hear the music of Love Eternal
Teaching us to reach for goodness sake. — Jon Anderson

That's the way life works: gratitude and appreciation just bring more goodness. Remember: Everything we give out comes back. Gratitude has all sorts of little, surprising rewards. — Louise Hay

Nonviolence is a way of life, where the task is to awaken the underlying goodness of every human being. — Amit Ray

I don't want to make a big deal about this or anything, but I think it's kind of cool how you do everything you do."
I squinted at him.
"I mean, you use sign language, and it's hard to communicate. But you're into art and you can seriously cook and, for goodness' sakes, you can even jitterbug. By the way, I told my mom, and she wants a video. Totally doesn't believe me. But, yeah, I think it's nice that you don't let a little hitch in life slow you down. I admire that."
I smiled. For a minute, I admired myself, too. He didn't know how deep my problems ran, but he was right all the same. It was no small thing to try, to find out what you cared about in life. Even this moment, with this wonderful, temporary boy beside me, was a tiny miracle. I ought to give myself some credit. — Kiera Cass

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

If any one will here contend that there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not presume to deny this; but I must observe that goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much privacy, elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance. In — George Eliot

A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Our goodness is our wealth and when we close our eyes to the tragedies of the hard lives, we start losing our wealth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one's boundaries, the more entrenched are one's battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries
and the opposites they create. — Ken Wilber

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because 'God' is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, 'God' is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. Each of us projects our limited experience on a cosmic screen in letters as big as our minds can fashion. For those whose vision is constricted (illiberal, narrow-minded people), this can have horrific consequences. But others respond to the munificence of creation with broad imagination and sympathy. Answering to the highest and best within and beyond themselves, they draw lessons and fathom meaning so redemptive that surely it touches the divine. — Forrest Church

I think the failure of The American church to affirm the goodness of civilizational life is our greatest failing today. — Greg Forster

Religion was created for the goodness of the humanity, but
religious dogma converts a good person to an evil person. — Debasish Mridha

You find joy in your inclusion in his work of redemption. You find hope in the glorious future that is to come. You are amazed by the fact that because Immanuel has invaded your life by his grace, you are never, ever alone. You find peace in the fact that grace means you are never left to the small resources of your own wisdom, righteousness, and strength. You meditate on God's glory and goodness, then celebrate. You rejoice in the fact that you no longer have to look for life in the people, situations, and locations around you, but you've been given life - life that is eternal. — Paul David Tripp

The first time he had taken the massa to one of these "high-falutin' to-dos," as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion - but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn't believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn't live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it's possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother's milk made possible the life of privilege they led. — Alex Haley

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.
John Steinbeck in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters — John Steinbeck

One day we shall domesticate him into a human being & then I shall be able to sketch him. For this is what we have done with ourselves & with God. The little boy will assist his own domestication; he is diligent & cooperative. He cooperates without knowing that the assistance we expect of him is for his own self-sacrifice. Recently, he has had much practice. And so he will go on progressing until little by little
because of essential goodness with which we achieve our salvation
he will pass from actual time to daily time, from meditation to expression, from existence to life. Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would constitute madness. — Clarice Lispector

The problem with me is that I cannot focus when she is on my mind. I can't. I probably will make a mistake when writing that paper and will start writing everything I feel about her - the professor will be very happy with that, I am sure. Oh well, such is my life. I guess I've been attempting my best to forget her for several weeks now. But even in that act of forgetting her, I am remembering her. I am recollecting her and recreating her in my mind. And that's where everything falls apart. In remembering her, I remember her goodness. In remembering her, I remember her weaknesses and my own. In remembering her, I am remembering myself. Out of that dark cave of mine, I call myself out. And then all of the remembering starts again. I doodle, I twitch, I aim restlessly for some unseen goal. And then my thoughts drift to you.
I'll let them stay there for now. Just for a minute.
Or two. — Moses Y. Mikheyev

The seamen had whitewashed the smoky ceilings of the ward, and that dear homely smell carried the vividness of thatch and lumpy walls and stew given from the goodness of a stranger's heart. But that was all there was of comfort, and the salt air had turned from cold to warm in the passing of a life, an afternoon. — Peter Carey

Rabindranath Tagore writes that the song he wanted to sing has never happened because he spent his days "stringing and unstringing" his instrument. Whenever I read these lines a certain sadness enters my soul. I get so preoccupied with the details and pressure of my schedule, with the hurry and worry of life, that I miss the song of goodness which is waiting to be sung through me. — Joyce Rupp

When all is said and done, the greatest satisfaction you'll have in this life as you grow old will be seeing your children grow in righteousness and faith and goodness as citizens of the society of which they are a part. — Gordon B. Hinckley

D. H. Lawrence described our Western culture as being like a great uprooted tree with its roots in the air. "We are perishing for lack of fulfillment of our greater needs," he wrote, "we are cut off from the great sources of our inward nourishment and renewal." We come alive as we rediscover the truth of our goodness and our natural connectedness to all of life. Our "greater needs" are met in relating lovingly with each other, relating with full presence to each moment, relating to the beauty and pain that is within and around us. — Tara Brach

The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness. — W. Somerset Maugham

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