Quotes About Good

Dalman recognized that the Kingdom in Jesus' teaching could be "a good which admits of being striven for, of being bestowed, of being possessed, and of being accepted.

The will of God here is not proper conduct in specific situations; it is the redemptive purpose of God for humankind. "God's will is that one should put his whole being at God's disposal. In this total 'belonging' to him he is to apply himself to what is good."57

There is a mercy which is weakness, and even treason against the common good.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Don't change shape," Raphael snapped. "Shut up." "Be good or I'll kiss you in front of everybody." "Hell no," I snarled. I had to hold on and live through this so I could punch him in the face. It was a great goal.

It's not that I'm that evil, really. I'm just beloved by evil things.

I didn't know you were in the plumbing repair business. I'm in the good son business. I couldn't leave my mother in the house with no running water.

How do you explain humanity to someone who has no frame of reference? "It has to do with good and evil. You have to decide for yourself what they are. For me, evil is striving to an end without regard for the means.

Some people in the world only saw in black and white. They were driven by fear. They had learned how to survive in their little corner of the world and they saw any change as a threat to their survival. But they still liked to think of themselves as good people. Good people didn't hate without a reason, so they grasped at any pretext, no matter how small, that gave them permission to hate. A line in a holy book. The color of a person's skin.

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will.

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.

N]ature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the means to the end... [so nature's] true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was... imparted to us as a practical... absolutely necessary... faculty.

The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. This is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. *

The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.

Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.

white magic is black magic. a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people, and demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards.

The death of God has set the angels free. And they are terrible. There are principalities and powers. Angels are the thoughts of God. Now he had been dissolved into his thoughts which are beyond our conception in their nature and their multiplicity and their power. God was at least the name of something which we thought was good. Now even the name has gone and the spiritual world is scattered. There is nothing any more to prevent the magnetism of many spirits.

What we can see determines what we choose. Good is the distant source of light, it is the unimaginable object of our desire. Our fallen nature knows only its name and its perfection. That is the idea which is vulgarized by existentialists and linguistic philosophers when they make good into a mere matter of personal choice. It cannot be defined, not because it is a function of our freedom, but because we do not know it.

When the poor ghosts have gone, what remains are ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. One can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm no one.

I prayed that all might be well between me and Hartley, that somehow that lifelong faithful remembering, what I now thought of as my mystical marriage, might not be lost or wasted, but somehow come to good!

By the time she wrote The Sovereignty of Good in 1970 her criticism had become stringent: 'we are not isolated free choosers, monarchs of all we survey, but benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy'.

Can one change oneself? I doubt it. Or if there is any change it must be measured as the millionth part of a millimetre. When the poor ghosts have gone, what remains are ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. One can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm to no one. I cannot think of any tiny good things to do at the moment, but perhaps I shall think of one tomorrow.

It was like a comedy by Shakespeare. All the ends of the story were being bound up in a good way.