"After the verb 'to Love,' 'to Help' is the most beautiful verb in the world."

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."

"At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done."

"Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow."

"Goodness is uneventful. It does not flash, it glows."

"No one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand."

"In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our inquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and beautiful --in the visible world giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and reason --and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes."

"There are few good women who do not tire of their role."

"There are two perfectly good men, one dead, and the other unborn."

"I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for..."

"We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right."

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."

"Goodness speaks in a whisper, evil shouts."

"If you can't return a favor, pass it on."

"Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end."

"On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time."

"The devil himself is good when he is pleased."

"Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is."

"No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it and without someone being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness."

"It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions."

"Nothing leads to good that is not natural."

"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced."

"How sick one gets of being good, how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness."

"A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."

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

"The measure of your holiness is proportionate to the goodness of your will."

"Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it."

"The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around."

"Goodness is the only investment which never fails."

"In goodness there are all kinds of wisdom."

"As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do."

"Good and bad men are less than they seem."

"The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration."

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man."

"If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will --the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them."

"We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!"

"Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it."

"To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed."

"Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature."

"Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die."