Top 100 Quotes About Good Nature
#1. The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
John Adams
#2. The gentle fair on nervous tea relies,
Whilst gay good-nature sparkles in her eyes;
An inoffensive scandal fluttering round,
Too rough to tickle, and too light to wound.
George Crabbe
#3. It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,
a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
Richard Whately
#4. Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
#5. Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.
Lord Chesterfield
#7. It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that many more mistake impertinence for sincerity.
George D. Prentice
#8. Men naturally warm and heady are transported with the greatest flush of good-nature.
Joseph Addison
#9. Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Joseph Addison
#10. A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.
Thomas More
#11. There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.
Joseph Addison
#12. As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity.
Plutarch
#13. She had learnt long ago that common sense, intelligence, good-nature, and strength of character were unimportant in comparison with a pretty face.
W. Somerset Maugham
#14. Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, 'On the Knowledge of Character' (1822)
Alan Bennett
#15. A large wildlife book, start to finish, could take one to two years, but then I would expect to get several good (nature) magazine features off the back of this, plus of course a lot of stock.
Nigel Dennis
#16. I hope you haven't given up on the S.Q.'s of the world, Reynie. As you see, there are a great many sheep in wolves' clothing. If not for S.Q.'s good nature, we'd never have escaped.
Trenton Lee Stewart
#18. Boyishness - by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker.
Thomas Hughes
#20. Honesty, disinterestedness and good nature are indispensable to procure the esteem and confidence of those with whom we live, and on whose esteem our happiness depends.
Thomas Jefferson
#21. Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature.
William Shenstone
#22. I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#23. Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.
Laurence Sterne
#24. The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
Walter Lippmann
#25. Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature.
Jeremy Collier
#27. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; he had the air of one who lavishes disinterested counsel, and ever so little exalts himself with his facile exuberance of speech. The Whirlpool
George Gissing
#28. Good breeding is the result of good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others.
Lord Chesterfield
#29. Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Peggy Noonan
#30. There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Henry David Thoreau
#31. Good-nature and good-sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Alexander Pope
#32. In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power ofbeing greatly useful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#33. Have as much good nature as good sense since they generally are companions.
William Wycherley
#34. At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#35. No, no, no, it cannot be," she cried; "she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip; and she only likes me now because I supply it.
Jane Austen
#36. For recreation, Lincoln took up bowling with his fellow boarders. Though a clumsy bowler, according to Dr. Busey, Lincoln "played the game with great zest and spirit" and "accepted success and defeat with like good nature and humor.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#37. Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent, to borrower and lender both.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#38. Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good-nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies.
John Gregory
#39. Nothing is rarer than true good nature; they who are reputed to have it are generally only pliant or weak.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#40. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers.
Henry James
#41. Mrs Hendred was a very pretty woman of great good-nature and much less than commonsense.
Georgette Heyer
#42. Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
Henry Ward Beecher
#43. All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature
Michel De Montaigne
#45. Good sense and good nature are never separated; and good nature is the product of right reason.
John Dryden
#46. The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#47. A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.
Nicolas Chamfort
#48. Nothing spoils human nature more than false zeal. The good nature of a heathen is more God-like than the furious zeal of a Christian.
Benjamin Whichcote
#49. Charity and good-nature give a sanction to the most common actions; and pride and ill-nature make our best virtues despicable.
William Wycherley
#50. I am who I am, and I think I have a good nature, by and large. But if someone takes advantage of that good nature, well then, you know, I'm not that nice a guy.
Tom Hanks
#51. Paradise for a happy man lies in his own good nature.
Edward Abbey
#52. Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
Sydney Smith
#53. Wit, shrewdness about other aspects of life, grasp of the arts, fundamental good nature, none seemed any help in solving his emotional problems; to some extent these qualities, as displayed by him, were even a hindrance.
Anthony Powell
#54. You will not be rewarded for your good nature. Your good nature is your reward.
Debasish Mridha
#55. Kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.
Thomas More
#57. Take heed of the Vinegar of sweet Wine, and the Anger of Good-nature.
Benjamin Franklin
#58. I quickly realized that shopping on Amazon had made the idea of parking my car and going into a store feel like an outrageous imposition on my time and good nature.
Maria Semple
#59. Oft has good nature been the fool's defence, And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
William Shenstone
#60. You want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mush of good-nature.
Charles Dudley Warner
#61. Everyone values the good nature of a man with a gun.
Mason Cooley
#62. If love is exiled from cities, their good nature becomes an evil nature.
Elena Ferrante
#64. Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life; Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend; Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.
Joseph Addison
#65. Do not suffer your good nature [ ... ] to say yes when you ought to say no; remember that it is a public not a private cause that is to be injured or benefitted by your choice
George Washington
#66. The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.
Horace Walpole
#67. This would be the way to Fanny's heart. She was not to be won by all that gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least, she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects.
Jane Austen
#68. How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute!
Jean De La Bruyere
#69. The more wit you have, the more good nature you must show, to induce people to pardon your superiority, for that is no easy matter.
Bill Vaughan
#70. Tis the glory of a man to vail to truth; as it is the mark of a good nature to be easily entreated.
William Penn
#71. Politeness has been defined to be artificial good-nature; but we may affirm, with much greater propriety, that good-nature is natural politeness.
Stanislaw Leszczynski
#72. Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
Joseph Addison
#73. The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
Joseph Addison
#74. If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.
Freeman Dyson
#75. The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.
Horace Walpole
#76. Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,
I mean good-nature,
are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.
John Dryden
#77. Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Charles Darwin
#78. An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.
Washington Irving
#79. Don't let your good nature cloud your critical eye. The critical eye should always be cold and clear.
Stephen King
#80. And yet we couldn't leave
it was if the rocks were holding us there. I mean, they were only rocks. But for some reason, those rocks made lonely feel good.
Cynthia Kadohata
#81. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in
the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste.
Howard Thurman
#82. The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.
Martin Luther
#83. My life isn't theories and formulae. It's part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I've absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone ... from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.
Audrey Hepburn
#84. Given is the word. Given publicly, on the first Good Friday, on a hill, in the sight of all, was the visible demonstration of the only permanent way to overcome evil. Human nature demands something more enduring than the unquiet equilibrium of rival powers.
Muriel Lester
#85. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges.
Camille Paglia
#86. Since humans are social animals, you're basically only as good as your reputation.
A.D. Aliwat
#87. States in the world are like individuals in the state of nature. They are neither perfectly good nor are they controlled by law.
Kenneth Waltz
#88. Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.
Bernard De Mandeville
#89. But as a wise and great teacher once explained so patiently, all good stories - stories that touch your soul, stories that change your nature, stories that cause you to become a better person from their telling-these stories always contain truth.
Camron Wright
#90. It's always an excellent idea to take a good look around at nature.
Darrell Calkins
#91. I throw back my head, and, feeling free as the wind, breathe in the fresh mountain air. Although I am heavy-hearted, my spirits are rising. To walk in nature is always good medicine.
Jean Craighead George
#93. The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and, pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters.
Matthew Arnold
#94. Being polite to a person is not a sign of respect for them. It is merely a sign of a good upbringing and a balanced nature.
Brandon Sanderson
#96. What is given by nature is not necessarily good, what is achieved by artifice is not necessarily worthless.
John Armstrong
#97. Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up or down? The tendency of our nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downward.
Mencius
#98. To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and that it may someday be possible for people to live in a society fit for free, fully human individuals, a thorough education in the nature of language, its uses and abuses, seems indispensable.
Aldous Huxley
#99. Only one kind of species of animals bites the hand that feeds them - mankind.
Fakeer Ishavardas
#100. It should look as if it has always been like that, as if Nature had made it that way.
That's good design.
Sepp Holzer
