Good By Quotes

It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future. ~ John Steinbeck

It matters not to be a Jewish or a Muslim or a Christian! What really matters is to be good by heart, to be honest and fair! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

We become willing servants to the good by the bonds their virtues lay upon us. ~ Philip Sidney

Saying good-by, Dick was aware of Elsie Speers' full charm, aware that she meant rather more to him than merely a last unwilingly relinquished fragment of Rosemary. He could possibly have made up Rosemary - he could never have made up her mother. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Many of the benefits of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) can be obtained without going into therapy. There are a number of self-help books, CDs and computer programs that have been used to treat depression and some of these have been tested in clinical trials with positive results. I can particularly recommend these two books. One is 'Control Your Depression', the lead author of which is Peter Lewinsohn, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon ... The other book that I can recommend with confidence is 'Feeling Good' by the psychiatrist David Burns. 'Control Your Depression' emphasizes behavioral techniques like increasing pleasant activities, improving social skills and learning to relax. 'Feeling Good' puts greater emphasis on changing the way people think about themselves. But both books include both cognitive and behavioral techniques. ~ Irving Kirsch

On the other hand, if you suggest to a person who has been a victim of a serious crime that we take the issue too seriously, they'll look at you like you're crazy. So that's a really tough issue, whether we're doing more harm than good by paying so much attention to a few cases that honestly don't normally intersect with our lives. ~ Bill James

the good are not so by nature...For if they were, this would follow: if the good were so by nature, we would have people who knew which among the young were good by nature; we would take those whom they had pointed out and guard them in the Acropolis, sealing them up there much more carefully than gold so that no one could corrupt them, and when they reached maturity they would be useful to their cities. ~ Plato

We diversify in two ways. First, we probably trade more markets worldwide than any other money manager. Second, we don't just use a single best system. To provide balance, we use lots of different systems ranging from short to long term. Some of these systems may not be that good by themselves, but we really don't care; that is not what they are there for. ~ Larry Hite

I think imperfections are important, just as mistakes are important. You only get to be good by making mistakes, and you only get to be real by being imperfect. ~ Julianne Moore

A young woman stood in the hallway, a suitcase at her feet, a cardboard carton in her hands. She wore a yellow cotton dress with a white flower print. The silver dragonfly on her necklace hung in the hollow of her collarbone and her thick red hair cascaded past her sunburned shoulders. She will tell you that she hadn't chosen that dress with any care, or the necklace, that she hadn't washed her hair or scrubbed her face, put a little red on her lips. Don't believe it. No one looks that good by accident. ~ David Benioff

You can make your room such a delightful place that they will want to come to you...she is always on hand. Everybody who wants her knows just where to go. If people love her, she gets naturally to be the heart of the house. Once make the little ones feel that your room is the place of all the others to come to when they are tired, or happy, or grieved, or sorry about anything and that the Katy who lives there is sure to give them a loving reception and the battle is won. For you know we never do people good by lecturing. ~ Susan Coolidge

Love me with your whole heart
Or give no love to me,
Half-love is a poor thing,
Neither bond nor free.

You must love me gladly
Soul and body too,
Or else find a new love,
And good-by to you. ~ Sara Teasdale

All middle-class novels are about the trials of three, all upper-class novels about mass fornication, all revolutionary novels about a bad man turned good by a tractor. ~ Christina Stead

Still, he never felt that the sermons he wrote at the cottage were good. By the time he got back to Washington to preach them, they no longer excited him. They seemed cold, lifeless. This was probably because Peter's best sermons rose out of the soil of emotion in his own heart. That emotion had to be a present, valid reality. He could not conjure it up. ~ Catherine Marshall

Evil and faults are corrected by good, by love, kindness, meekness, humility, and patience. ~ John Of Kronstadt

No one can do me any good by loving me; I have more love than I need or could do any good with; but people do me good by making me love them - which isn't easy. ~ John Ruskin

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it; ~ Mark Twain

You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual. ~ C.S. Lewis

I will. I surely will. Good-by, ma'am." As ~ John Steinbeck

Fucking shut up, you whining cow, you didn't mind spending the money!' yelled Simon, his jaw jutting again; and Andrew wanted to roar at his mother to stay silent: she blabbed when any idiot could have told her she should keep quiet, and she kept quiet when she might have done good by speaking out; she never learned, she never saw any of it coming. ~ J.K. Rowling

The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people positively do not want to be "done good" by the humanitarian. Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine. ~ Isabel Paterson

We get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book, and calculating profits ... so much help by so much reading. it is rather when we gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth
'tis then we get the right good from the book. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Let him the intelligent man admonish, let him teach, let him forbid what is improper ! - he will be beloved of the good, by the bad he will be hated. ~ Gautama Buddha

I've never been unhappy with Capitol. Not really. They've been really good by me. ~ Bob Seger

Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, made a comment that sounds almost prophetic now: that the happy, primitive society (which, by the way, never existed) is lost for all those who have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, Popper warns, the more certainly we will reach the Inquisition, the secret police, and a romanticized gangsterism. But once the existential problems of the individual, who is good by nature, can be blamed on the "evil" society, nothing stands in the way of sheer imagination. The definition of the benevolent society free of all power is only a question of fantasy. ~ Paul Watzlawick

Good by,' he said and hung up. What kind of world is it, he asked himself, when an android phones up a bounty hunter and offers him assistance? ~ Philip K. Dick

If I could be a third of the woman that my mom is and have a third of the strength that she has, then I will have done good by this life. ~ Brittany Murphy

The least of of us have some influence in this big world; and perhaps my little girl can do some good by showing others that a contented heart and a happy face are better ornaments than any Paris can give her. ~ Louisa May Alcott

My favorite action movie growing up was 'Supergirl.' It wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was my favorite because I wanted to be her. I have a Supergirl tattoo. ~ Adrianne Palicki

We can do more good by being good, than in any other way. ~ Rowland Hill

Men are not good in truth when they are good by halves. ~ Thomas Watson

Keith Richards ... was once asked how he came up with all those amazing guitar riffs. His answer? He just starts playing until he makes the right mistake. In other words he's optimistic he will create something good by virtue of getting something "wrong." ~ Mark Stevenson

How strange it is, Anna. Yesterday, I have filed in my mind as a good day, notwithstanding it was filled with mortal illness and the grieving of the recently bereft. Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick. ~ Geraldine Brooks

One may discover integrity in the companionship of others, but one does not ever discover integrity by bowing to the demands of peer pressure. The heavier the pressure is toward conformity - no matter how lofty the proposed final goal - the more one must be suspicious of it and antagonistic to it. History has one consistent lesson in it: one by one, people give up what they know to be right and true for the sake of something loftier that they do not quite understand but should want in order to be good; soon, people are the tools of despots and atrocities are committed on a grand scale. And then, it is too late. There is no going back.

Women are especially given to giving up what we know and feel to be right and true for the sake of others or for the sake of something more important than ourselves. This is because the condition in which women live is a colonized condition. Women are colonized by men, in body, in mind. Defined everywhere as evil when we act in our own self-interest, we strive to be good by renouncing self-interest altogether. ~ Andrea Dworkin

The state - or, to make matters more concrete, the government - consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting 'A' to satisfy 'B'. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods. ~ H.L. Mencken

Today, we live in the Age of Envy.

"Envy" is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.

Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves. . . . That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.

This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree. . . . Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one's own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.

If a child wants to get good grades in school, but is unable or unwilling to achieve them and begins to hate the children who do, that is hatred of the good. If a man regards intelligence as a value, but is troubled by self-doubt and begins to hate the men he judges to be intelligent, that is hatred of the good.

The nature of the particular values a man chooses to hold is not the primary factor in this issue (although irrational values may contribute a great deal to the formation of that emotion). The primary factor and distinguishing characteristic is an emotional mechanism set in reverse: ~ Ayn Rand

What a folly is it now," he instantly resumed, leaving the general and attacking a particular, "to think to make people good by promises and threats
promises of a heaven that would bore the dullest among them to death, and threats of a hell the very idea of which, if only half conceived, would be enough to paralyse every nerve of healthy action in the human system! ~ George MacDonald

Some are born virtuous, some become virtuous. To be good by nature is indeed fortunate but to become good is like walking on a double-edged sword; it takes a longer time and is more painful. ~ Umera Ahmed

When you do good by the world, the world will do good by you ~ Russell Simmons

Bright Star Of Beauty

Bright star of beauty, on whose eyelids sit
A thousand nymph-like and enamour'd Graces,
The Goddesses of Memory and Wit,
Which there in order take their several places;
In whose dear bosom sweet delicious Love
Lays down his quiver, which he once did bear,
Since he that blessed Paradise did prove,
And leaves his mother's lap to sport him there.
Let others strive to entertain with words;
My soul is of a braver metal made;
I hold that vile which vulgar wit affords;
In me's that faith which Time cannot invade.
Let what I praise be still made good by you;
Be you most worthy, whilst I am most true ~ Michael Drayton

Affirmations take our thoughts to a more protective and powerful place. By affirming good, by affirming daily gratitude, you, yourself will find more peace from giving your thoughts a break from the worry cycle. ~ Machel Shull

I guess that's what growing up is. Saying good-by to a lot of things. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it isn't. But it is all right. ~ Beverly Cleary

..And then -- that personal, that wholly isolated direction at the back of your head, that black place from which you looked out on things so that all of those people, even Toni, out there -- how could the creature called Sophy who sat there at the mouth of the tunnel behind her belong to anyone but herself? It was all silly. <..> You could choose to belong to people the way the Goodchilds and Bells and Mrs Hugeson did by being good, by doing what they said was right. Or you could choose what was real and what you knew was real -- your own self sitting inside with its own wishes and rules at the mouth of the tunnel. ~ William Golding

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, - What is truth? and of the affections, - What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All unhappiness is caused by our not having mastery over the body... We are all putting the cart before the horse... Take the system of work, for instance. We are trying to do good by ... comforting the poor. We do not get to the cause which created the misery. It is like taking a bucket to empty out the ocean, and more water comes all the time. The Yogi sees that this is nonsense. He says that the way out of misery is to know the cause of misery first... ~ Swami Vivekananda

Do you think to make man good by enacting more laws? ~ Hock G. Tjoa

Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.
"Good-by
because I love you." He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him
but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.
She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. ~ Kate Chopin

The art historians are the real wreckers of art, Reger said. The art historians twaddle so long about art until they have killed it with their twaddle. Art is killed by the twaddle of the art historians. My God, I often think, sitting here on the settee while the art historians are driving their helpless flocks past me, what a pity about all these people who have all art driven out of them, driven out of them for good, by these very art historians. The art historians' trade is the vilest trade there is, and a twaddling art historian, but then there are only twaddling art historians, deserves to be chased out with a whip, chased out of the world of art, Reger said, all art historians deserve to be chased out of the world of art, because art historians are the real wreckers of art and we should not allow art to be wrecked by the art historians who are really art wreckers. Listening to an art historian we feel sick, he said, by listening to an art historian we see the art he is twaddling about being ruined, with the twaddle of the art historian art shrivels and is ruined. Thousands, indeed tens of thousands of art historians wreck art by their twaddle and ruin it, he said. The art historians are the real killers of art, if we listen to an art historian we participate in the wrecking of art, wherever an art historian appears art is wrecked, that is the truth. ~ Thomas Bernhard

Emily interrupted.
"Don," she said. "would you mind going home?"
He pulled his soft hat violently down over his forehead. "I suppose you think that I'm a cad."
"I just don't think about you. Good-by," Emily said, and closed the door firmly behind him. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

I know Barack Obama. And I believe that as president, he'll pursue the common good by seeking common ground rather than trying to divide us. ~ Bob Casey, Jr.

You must know that you are always near to everything! Nothing is far from you! Life means to be close to everything, to be close to death, to smile, to hot, to cold, to joy, to sorrow! We live in a very small island surrounded by everything, surrounded by good, by bad, by sweet, by bitter! We are very close to everything! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

As the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things.
Love is the same way.
Use it to "season" people. ~ Vera Nazarian

It's all because of doing things by halves and saying things by halves, being good by halves, that the world is in the mess it's in today. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions. ~ Milton Friedman

Not a lack of good, honest and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of life force, of what is known as heart, of that yearning which makes a man choose one out of all the countless paths in life presented to him and desire that one alone ... workers for the common good had not been brought to this love of the common good by heart, but had reasoned in their minds that it was good to be concerned with it and were concerned with it only because of that. ~ Leo Tolstoy

On the Rolling Stones - You will walk out of the Amphitheatre after watching the Stones perform and suddenly the Chicago stockyards smell clean and good by comparison. ~ Tom Fitzpatrick

FAREWELL. Tie the strings to my life, my Lord, Then I am ready to go! Just a look at the horses - Rapid! That will do! Put me in on the firmest side, So I shall never fall; For we must ride to the Judgment, And it's partly down hill. But never I mind the bridges, And never I mind the sea; Held fast in everlasting race By my own choice and thee. Good-by to the life I used to live, And the world I used to know; And kiss the hills for me, just once; Now I am ready to go! ~ Emily Dickinson

Any man who is good by heart is a great man! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption - and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by His grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering but our selves. ~ Thomas Merton

Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good. ~ Thomas Merton

Man is a victim of dope
In the incurable form of hope! ~ Ogden Nash

There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own - I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it! ~ Ayn Rand

The atonement, or forgiveness of sin once and for all achieved on the cross, weighs in, and heavily. But the atonement is confirmed, ratified, sealed, and made enduringly good by virtue of Christ's rising from death. Our justification hinges on a risen life, present in us now because Christ is present with us now. ~ Paul F. M. Zahl

A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled up on top of it.
Most of us have too much in our lives. As David Goetz writes, "Too much of the good life ends up being toxic, deforming us spiritually." A lot of things are good by themselves, but all of it together keeps us from living healthy, fruitful lives for God ... Has your relationship with God actually changed the way you live? ~ Francis Chan

One of my favorite operations managers often reminds people to "assume positive intent" - that is, when conflict arises between people or groups, assume that all parties are motivated by the same desire to do good by the company. ~ Anonymous

In fact ants, to cite just one example, work unselfishly for the community; we humans sometimes do not look good by comparison. We are supposed to be higher beings, so we must act according to our higher selves. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

I have sex," Grace shrugged.
I meant with a man," Claudia said dryly.
Now why would I ruin something so good by inviting a man along?" Grace asked. ~ Sarah Mayberry

I make everybody feel that he doesn't really want to do any good work but that he just wants to get work done that will be thought good by everyone he knows ... ~ J.D. Salinger

It's good by comparison only! Yes, there are worse places, but so long as this hellhole is considered the ideal, we'll never get anywhere. We cannot let them convince us this is normal! ~ Brandon Sanderson

For if "Free-will" cannot of itself will good, but wills good by grace alone, (for we are speaking of "Free-will" apart from grace and inquiring into the power which properly belongs to each) who does not see, that that good will, merit, and reward, belong to grace alone. ~ Martin Luther

All fashion brands are about looking good. Being Human is also about doing good. And you can do good by the simple act of slipping into a t-shirt or a pair of jeans. ~ Salman Khan

You are really starting to annoy me, Stanton."
Nick didn't blink. "Good. By the end of the night I hope to finish the job. ~ Julie James

The wagon went down from the bluffs into the wooded creek bottoms, and high in a treetop a mockingbird began to sing.
"I never heard a mockingbird sing so early," said Ma, and Pa answered, softly, "He is telling us good-by. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

If I feel strongly, I say it. I know I can do more good by being vocal than by staying quiet. I'd have a whole lot more money if I lied, but I wouldn't enjoy spending it. ~ Martina Navratilova

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

Good-by,'! he said to all those who were kneeling. 'Don't be said. To die is nothing. The only bad thing is to die at the hands of this canalla. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament. ~ Walter Bagehot

I thought to do something good by giving an interview to People, which was exceedingly foolish of me. I asked Aaron [Asher] to tell you that the Good Intentions Paving Company had fucked up again. The young interviewer turned my opinions inside out, cut out the praises and made it all sound like disavowal, denunciation and excommunication. Well, we're both used to this kind of thing, and beyond shock. In agreeing to take the call, and make a statement I was simply muddle-headed. But if I had been interviewed by an angel for the Seraphim and Cherubim Weekly I'd have said, as I actually did say to the crooked little slut, that you were one of our very best and most interesting writers. I would have added that I was greatly stimulated and entertained by your last novel, and that of course after three decades I understood perfectly well what you were saying about the writer's trade - how could I not understand, or miss suffering the same pains. Still our diagrams are different, and the briefest description of the differences would be that you seem to have accepted the Freudian explanation: A writer is motivated by his desire for fame, money and sexual opportunities. Whereas I have never taken this trinity of motives seriously. But this is an explanatory note and I don't intend to make a rabbinic occasion of it. Please accept my regrets and apologies, also my best wishes. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the dee ~ Saul Bellow

As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them. ~ William James

Go on, son, you're not doing me any good by bleeding. ~ Shannon Hale

He that doth righteousness; that is, righteousness which the gospel calleth so, is righteous; that is, precedent to, or before he doth that righteousness. For he doth not say, he shall make his person righteous by acts of righteousness that he shall do; for then an evil tree may bear good fruit, yea, and make itself good by doing so; but he saith, He that doth righteousness is righteous; as he saith, He that doth righteousness is born of him. ~ John Bunyan

She thought of the revelations she held cradled against her chest, of how they could potentially serve up more discord, more upset and controversy. Would she be doing this society any good by revealing her new knowledge?
"I . . ." She swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you. Really, it's nothing that can't wait. Actually" - she stood up and extracted the scrolls from Noah's hold - "all I wanted was, uh . . . help with some interpretation. But you are busy . . ." She rounded the peculiar triangular table as casually as she could while she spoke, even turning to back out of the room while giving them a bright smile that she hoped did not look as fake as it felt. "You know, there are lots of books down there, and I bet there's a translation." She reached up to smack her palm into her forehead, chiding herself for not thinking properly.
Isabella reached for the door and closed it even faster than she had originally opened it.
Noah looked over at Jacob, one dark brow lifting toward his thick hairline.
"Does . . .?" He raised a hand to point to the door, looking utterly perplexed. "Does she have any idea what a lousy liar she is?"
"Apparently not," Jacob said with a long, low sigh. "I think that was my fault," he speculated wryly.
"Your fault?"
"Yeah . . . it is . . . a long story. We better get her."
"Relax," Noah chuckled. "She's leaning against the other side of the door, trying to catch her breath.
"I know. I just th ~ Jacquelyn Frank

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. ~ Ayn Rand

and after saying good-by to him at the station, Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless. ~ Sinclair Lewis

I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness. ~ Boris Pasternak

It occurred to him that he had not spent his life as he should have done. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. ~ Leo Tolstoy

To despair over one's sins indicates that sin has become or wants to be internally consistent. It wants nothing to do with the good, does not want to be so weak as to listen occasionally to other talk. No, it insists on listening only to itself, on having dealings only with itself; it closes itself up within itself, indeed, locks itself inside one more inclosure, and protects itself against every attack or pursuit by the good by despairing over sin. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

You will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts. ~ Gore Vidal

You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle

This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be. ~ Shauna Niequist

Every father is given the opportunity to corrupt his daughter's nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has to face the music. For what has been spoiled by the father can only be made good by a father, just as what has been spoiled by the mother can only be repaired by a mother. The disastrous repetition of the family pattern could be described as the psychological original sin, or as the curse of the Atrides running through the generations. ~ Carl Jung

No child ever became 'good' by being told that she or he was bad or by beating her/him. ~ Maddy Malhotra

For, when the friendship is purely spiritual, the love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God; so that, as the one grows, the other grows also. For the spirit of God has this property, that it increases good by adding to it more good, inasmuch as there is likeness and conformity between them. But, when this love arises from the vice of sensuality aforementioned, it produces the contrary effects; for the more the one grows, the more the other decreases, and the remembrance of it likewise. If that sensual love grows, it will at once be observed that the soul's love of God is becoming colder, and that it is forgetting Him as it remembers that love; there comes to it, too, a certain remorse of conscience. And, on the other hand, if the love of God grows in the soul, that other love becomes cold and is forgotten; for, as the two are contrary to one another, not only does the one not aid the other, but the one which predominates quenches and confounds the other, and becomes strengthened in itself, as the philosophers say. Wherefore Our Saviour said in the Gospel: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' That is to say, the love which is born of sensuality ends in sensuality, and that which is of the spirit ends in the spirit of God and causes it to grow. This is the difference that exists between these two kinds of love, whereby we m ~ Juan De La Cruz

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. ~ Ayn Rand

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother
her incomparable mother!
five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! ... Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night
and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here
writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today? ~ Mark Twain