Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes

The eternal conflict of good and the best with bad and the worst is on.

A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.

I've never had any desire to be good. I don't like goodness particularly.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

Being against evil doesn't make you good.

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.

All the devils respect virtue.

It's so much easier to do good than to be good.

I'd always found goodness more interesting then evil, though I was aware this wasn't the most general view. To my mind, it took more work and more courage to be good, an opinion continually reinforced by my own shortcomings.

I just want to be as good a person as I can be.

It is more difficult to be an honorable man for a week than to be a hero for fifteen minutes.

"What is good?" ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: "To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching."

Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

Courage without discipline is nearer beastliness than manhood.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

He wasn't evil as much as magnificently innocent of any kind of morality.

The man of noble mind seeks to achieve the good in others and not their evil. The little-minded man is the reverse of this.

How indestructibly the good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

A good man will certainly also possess courage; but a brave man is not necessarily good.