Quotes About Good

The person who loves reputation supposes that his own good depends on the activities of others; the lover of pleasure finds his own good in being affected by his emotions. But the person who has Intelligence understands the good to be in his own actions.

10. Remorse is annoyance at yourself for having passed up something that's to your benefit. But if it's to your benefit it must be good—something a truly good person would be concerned about. But no truly good person would feel remorse at passing up pleasure. So it cannot be to your benefit, or good.

As virtue and wickedness consist not in passion, but in action; so neither doth the true good or evil of a reasonable charitable man consist in passion, but in operation and action.

In our relationships with others we must work for their collective good, while treating them justly and fairly as individuals.

What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad- as terrible a blindness as the kind that can't tell white from black.

The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.

I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity

There are two features that are common to the minds of gods, men, and any other rational beings there may be: they are immune to external obstruction, and what they count as good is right thinking and right action, which they make the limit of their desire.

No man can hinder thee to live as thy nature doth require. Nothing can happen unto thee, but what the common good of nature doth require.

say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad.

He also that pursues after pleasures, as that which is truly good and flies from pains, as that which is truly evil: is impious.

The highest good of man is consciously to work with God for the common good, and this is the sense in which the Stoic tried to live in accord with nature.

But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own

They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

Whatever the nature of the whole does, and whatever serves to maintain it, is good for every part of nature. The world is maintained by change—in the elements and in the things they compose. That should be enough for you; treat it as an axiom.

Eudaemonia (happiness) is a good daemon, or a good thing. What then art thou doing here, O imagination? Go away, I entreat thee by the gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee: only go away.

Repentance is a sort of self-reproach at some useful thing passed by; but the good must needs be a useful thing, and ever to be cultivated by the true good man; but the true good man would never regret having passed a pleasure by. Pleasure therefore is neither a useful thing nor a good.

The salvation of life lies in seeing each object in its essence and its entirety, discerning both the material and the causal: in applying one's whole soul to doing right and speaking the truth. There remains only the enjoyment of living a linked succession of good deeds, with not the slightest gap between them. p121

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just. Then they will not care how devout you have been. But will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods then you will be gone but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of the loves ones.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

The good life is impossible without a good state; and there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered state.

Salus populi suprema est lex [the good of the people is the chief law].

they follow nature as the most perfect guide to a good life. Now

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali.