Quotes About Good

That appeared to be the way of all evil, it compelled the good to cease being good and to meet evil on its own evil ground.

The Germans have a poem to the effect that when you hear singing you may lie down in peace, for evil men have no songs. The Nazis were using this as one more camouflage, but for Lanny tonight it held good.

What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good. And -- though played out forms can throw up miraculous sports like The Importance of Being Earnest or Decline and Fall-- what is good is always what is new, in both form and content. What is good forgets whatever models it might have had, and is unexpected; we have to catch it on the wing. ((p. 62, Reading & Writing)

There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.

It had seemed a good idea at the time to order the furniture for her new home online from a chain retailer.

But she was a good boss, Sam. The best I've ever had.

A human being survives by his ability to forget. Memory is always ready to blot out the bad and retain only the good.

There is a deep and undeniable sadness in all this: whenever we see the dawn of an eternal good that will never be overcome by evil – an evil that is itself eternal but will never succeed in overcoming good – whenever we see this dawn, the blood of old people and children is always shed.

There is only one truth. There cannot be two truths. It's hard to live with no truth, with scraps of truth, with a half-truth. A partial truth is no truth at all. Let the wonderful silence of this night be the truth, the whole truth... Let us remember the good in these men; let us remember their great achievements.

If you have done a hard day's work under a strong sun and then walked six miles the effect of two glasses of port, when the port is good, is such to marvel at.

When you're in war, you don't have to be perfect to be good, you just have to be 51% better than the enemy if you want a moral edge. We in the West have this Utopian idea that we have to be 99.9% good, and if we're not, then we're no damned good. And the enemy knows that.

Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.

Just see how idiotic one can be! One reckons without the good God.

Good thoughts have their abysses as well as evil ones.

The French Revolution, which is nothing more nor less than the ideal armed with the sword, rose abruptly, and by that very movement, closed the door of evil and opened the door of good. It released the question, promulgated truth, drove away miasma, purified the century, crowned the people. We can say it created man a second time, in giving him a second soul, his rights. Page 997 Saint-Denis chapter 7 Argot part III

Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?

You have to be used to the twists of fate and being caught up in them to dare lift your eyes when certain questions appear in all their horrible starkness. Good or evil are behind the stern question mark. What are you going to do? asks the Sphinx. The habit of undergoing trials by fire is one Jean Valjean had acquired. He looked the sphinx full in the face. He examined the merciless problem from every angle.

The French Revolution, which is nothing else than the idea armed with the sword, rose erect, and, with the same abrupt movement, closed the door of ill and opened the door of good.

But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor. CHAPTER

Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.

Isn't there in every human soul...an initial spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the next, that good can bring out, prime, ignite, set on fire and cause to blaze splendidly, and that evil can never extinguish?

But for the matter of that, Ursus, although eccentric in manner and disposition, was too good a fellow to invoke or disperse hail, to make faces appear, to kill a man with the torment of excessive dancing, to suggest dreams fair or foul and full of terror, and to cause the birth of cocks with four wings. He had no such mischievous tricks.