Goodness – Zitate

Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.

— E. H. Chapin

How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it.

— George MacDonald

Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good.

— Michelet

Be good my child, and let who will be clever; Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long; And so make life, death, and that vast forever One grand, sweet song.

— Charles Kingsley

Be not simply good; be good for something.

— Thoreau

No good thing is ever lost. Nothing dies, not even life which gives up one form only to resume another. No good action, no good example dies. It lives forever in our race. While the frame moulders and disappears, the deed leaves an indelible stamp, and moulds the very thought and will of future generations.

— Samuel Smiles

For ever and ever, my darling, yes—      Goodness and love are undying; Only the troubles and cares of earth      Are winged from the first for flying.           Our way we plough           In the furrow "now;"      But after the tilling and growing the sheaf;      Soil for the root, but the sun for the leaf—           And God keepeth watch forever.

— Mary Mapes Dodge

Nothing that man ever invents will absolve him from the universal necessity of being good as God is good, righteous as God is righteous, and holy as God is holy.

— Charles Kingsley

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

— J. F. Clarke

We cannot rekindle the morning beams of childhood; we cannot recall the noontide glory of youth; we cannot bring back the perfect day of maturity; we cannot fix the evening rays of age in the shadowy horizon; but we can cherish that goodness which is the sweetness of childhood, the joy of youth, the strength of maturity, the honor of old age, and the bliss of saints.

— Henry Giles