“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 1
Good things, when short, are
twice as good.
~ BALTASAR G RACIAN
(The Art of Worldly Wisdom)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 2
To make one good action succeed another,
is the perfection of goodness.
~ ALI IBN-ABI-TALIB
(Sentences)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 3
There's so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it hardly behooves any of us
To talk about the rest of us.
~ ANONYMOUS
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 4
The good is, like nature, an immense
landscape in which man advances through
centuries of exploration.
~ JOSE ORTEGA Y G ASSET
(“To the Reader”, Meditations on Quixote)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 5
Good has two meanings: it means both
that which is good absolutely and that
which is good for somebody.
~ ARISTOTLE
(Nichomachean Ethics)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 6
You mortals, the Lord has told you
what was good. This is what the
Lord requires from you:
to do what is right,
to love mercy,
and to live humbly with your God.
~ MICAH 6:8
(God's Word Version)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 7
A good thing which prevents us from
enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
~ SPINOZA
(Ethics)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 8
Goodness consists not in the outward
things we do, but in the inward things we
are. To be good is the great thing.
~ EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 9
No amount of good deeds can make us
good persons. We must be good
before we can do good.
~ C HESTER A. PENNINGTON
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 10
Men always love what is good or what
they find good; it is in judging what is
good that they go wrong.
~ JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(The Social Contract)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 11
I expect to pass through this world
but once; any good thing, therefore, that
I can do, or any kindness that I can show
to my fellow-creatures, let me do it now;
let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall
not pass this way again.
~ ANONYMOUS
(OFTEN ASCRIBED TO WILLIAM PENN)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 12
How far that little candle throws his
beams! So shines a good deed in a
naughty world.
~ WILLIAM S HAKESPEARE
(Merchant of Venice)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 13
We must take the good with the bad;
For the good when it’s good, is so
very good
That the bad when it’s bad can’t be bad!
~ MOLIERE
(The Imaginary Invalid)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 14
Goodness is the only investment
that never fails.
~ HENRY DAVID THOREAU
(“Higher Laws” Walden)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 15
Howe’er it be, it seems to me,
‘Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
~ ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(Lady Clara Vere do Vere)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 16
Waste no more time arguing what a good
man should be. Be one.
~ M ARCUS AURELIUS
(Meditations)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 17
Goodness is love in action, love with its
hand to the plow, love with the burden on
its back, love following his footsteps who
went about continually doing good.
~ JAMES HAMILTON
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 18
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
As long as ever you can.
~ JOHN WESLEY
(John Wesley's Rule)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 19
The omission of good is no less
reprehensible than the commission of evil.
~ PLUTARCH
(“Contentment” Moralia)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 20
It is from reason that justice springs, but
goodness is born of wisdom.
~ MAURICE MAETERLINCK
(Wisdom and Destiny)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 21
It is only great souls that know how much
glory there is in being good.
~ SOPHOCLES
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 22
It is easy to perform a good action, but not
easy to acquire a settled habit of
performing such actions.
~ ARISTOTLE
(Nicomachean Ethics)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 23
Goodness that preaches undoes itself.
~ RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(Journals)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 24
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a
good action by stealth, and to have it
found out by accident.
~ CHARLES LAMB
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 25
Goodness is easier to recognize
than to define.
~ W. H. AUDEN
(I Believe)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 26
Your actions in passing, pass not away,
for every good work is a grain of
seed for eternal life.
~ ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 27
They’re only truly great who
are truly good.
~ GEORGE CHAPMAN
(Revenge for Honour)
“Goodness”
FEBRUARY 28
Good men are not those who now and
then do a good act, but men who join
one good act to another.
~ H ENRY WARD BEECHER
(Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit)