"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
— Mother Teresa

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it...always."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. "
— Mae West

"Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently."
— Maya Angelou

"Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:

- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special."
— Nelson Mandela

"Darkness has always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light?"
— Clive Barker (Abarat)

"He's not safe, but he's good (referring to Aslan, the Lion, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)"
— C.S. Lewis

"It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there. "
— Jim Henson

"You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not."
— Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere: A Novel)

"This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified."
— Martin Luther

"If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it."
— Marcus Aurelius

"Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them."
— W.H. Auden

"You are protected, in short, by your ability to love"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."
— Desmond Tutu

"Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us."
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Men)

"'When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.' --People of sparks--"
— Jeanne DuPrau

"...tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That’s why we’ve got to make sure we pass it on."
— Billie Letts (Where the Heart Is)

"The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil. "
— Daniel Webster (The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster: Diplomatic Papers And Miscellaneous Letters)

"On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness."
— Albert Camus

"Badness is only spoiled goodness."
— C.S. Lewis

"Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil."
— Julius Lester (The Autobiography of God: A Novel)

"A silly idea is current that good people don’t know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"Be good, and be lonesome."
— Mark Twain

"I smiled back and I thought
how incredible that was, that they would find the time to smile. There was goodness in the world still, even if you couldn’t always see it."
— Jenny Valentine (Broken Soup)

"“Intellectual freedom begins when one says with Socrates that he knows that he knows nothing, and then goes on to add: Do you know what you don’t know and therefore what you should know? If your answer is affirmative and humble, then you are your own teacher, you are making your own assignment, and you will be your own best critic.”"
— Scott Buchanan

"If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect."
— Leo Tolstoy