Quotes to inspire and reflect

Gossip is an evil thing by nature, she’s a light weight to lift up, / oh very easy, but heavy to carry, and hard to put down again.

To create an unfavourable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.

The best loved man or maid in the town would perish with anguish / Could they hear all that their friends say in the course of a day.

Out of some little thing, too free a tongue / Can make an outrageous wrangle.

Living or dead, to a good man there can come no evil.

I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they

A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility.

Yes, the idiot is indeed the good man, but only because he doesn’t know any better.

Whatever harm the evil may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

It’s easier to swoon in pious dreams / Than do good actions.

It is from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

It is a hard thing for a man / to be righteous, if the unrighteous man is to have the greater right.

Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.

A good man has more hope in his death than a wicked man in his life.

Jail doesn't teach anyone to do good, nor Siberia, but a man—yes! A man can teach another man to do good—believe me!

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

Goodness that preaches undoes itself.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

The only fault’s with time; / All men become good creatures: but so slow!

Good is not good, unless / A thousand it possess, / But doth waste with greediness.

May the good God pardon all good men.

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

[Gjoodness that comes out of hiding and assumes a public role is no longer good, but corrupt in its own terms and will carry its own corruption wherever it goes.

Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us.

The best part of health is fine disposition.

A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as an habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is a mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains.

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

The apprehension of the good / Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.

The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.

Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.

Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and God himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil, as you make it.

Jove weighs affairs of earth in dubious scales, / And the good suffers while the bad prevails.

Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.

Nothing is good for him for whom nothing is bad.

There is no such thing in man’s nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.

Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.

Good and bad may not be dissevered; / There is, as there should be, a commingling.

People forget the good, because the bad has more punch.

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.