Good (goods)

“ Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature or benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that they should possess and dispense the goods of the world. ”

“ Its modern forms have been greatly varied, but they all153 agree in founding the morally good in utility. That which experience shows to be useful, as promotive of personal or social interests and happiness, becomes thereby right, or the norm of moral choices and conduct. The theory, in all its modifications, is a "goods" theory,51 interpreting obligation as simply the behest to conform life to the attainment of the various forms of good, even the chief, as happiness or enjoyment, provided for in man's nature and condition. ”

“ If one says, "It is still good qua good will," we may reply, "Yes, but so are all goods; courage is always good qua courage, knowledge qua knowledge," etc. All harmless joys are good without qualification, and all goods whatever are good except as they get in the way of some greater good or lead to trouble. ”

“ Say, in pursuit of profit or delight, Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right; Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed, Which meets contempt, or which compassion first? Count all the advantage prosperous vice attains, 'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains: And grant the bad what happiness they would, One they must want, which is, to pass for good. Oh, blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below, Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe! Who sees and follows that great scheme the best, Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest. ”

“ The problem is to combine the absolute value of that Goodness which, as we say, 'saves the soul' with the relative values of the various good things that soothe or beautify life. For, if there is any value at all—I will not say in health and happiness, but in art, poetry, knowledge, refinement, public esteem, or human affection, and if their claims do clash, as in common opinion they sometimes do, with the demands of absolute sanctity, how is the balance to be struck? ”

“ Thus, in conduct, actions are judged 'good' or 'evil' and 'right' or 'wrong'; in thinking, ideas are 'true' or 'false,' and 'relevant' or 'irrelevant'; for art, objects are 'beautiful' or 'ugly,' and so forth, for the modes of valuation in life are innumerable. Any one of these adjectives either denotes value or censures lack of worth, and each gets its meaning by reference to the specific purpose, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, it appeals to. The summum bonum, or supreme good, will then be the ideal of the harmonious satisfaction of all purposes. ”

“ All other things hang upon the soul, and the things of the soul herself hang upon wisdom, if they are to be good; and so wisdom is inferred to be that which profits—and virtue, as we say, is profitable? ”

“ The good for them was not an infinite process of idle distinction. Their interest is practical, and they do and must understand by the good (which they call a means) some means to an end in itself; which latter they assume, and unconsciously fix in whatever is agreeable to themselves. If we said to them, for example, ‘Virtue is a means, and so is everything besides, and a means to everything else besides. Virtue is a means to pleasure, pain, health, disease, wealth, poverty, and is a good, because a means; and so also with pain, poverty, &c. They are all good, because all means. ”

“ What is the good of it all? Does it pay? In the gift of increasing joy to us, in its obvious humanity and in its continuous inspiration, it certainly does make the work of life here in every branch the better. ”

“ Nature not only bears it, but challenges it, for there is nothing with her preferable, nothing which she desires more than credit and reputation, and praise, and honor, and glory. I choose here to describe this one thing under many names, and I have used many that you may have the clearer idea of it; for what I mean to say is, that whatever is desirable of itself, proceeding from virtue, or placed in virtue, and commendable on its own account (which I would rather agree to call the only good than deny it to be the chief good) is what men should prefer above all things. ”

“ He may do these, even before he is justified. And these are, in one sense, good works; they are good and profitable to men. But it does not follow, that they are, strictly speaking, good in themselves, or good in the sight of God. ”

“ With what grace, intelligence, and appreciation of values would you move among the other monitors of great fortunes, admired by them, praised, and loved, I think. What a factor for good you could become! ”

“ Let us suppose, in the first place, that it is meant to hold everywhere.
Then (1) we are taking for granted that nothing is good in itself; that only the means to something else are good; that ‘good,’ in a word, = ‘good for,’ and good for something else. ”

“ Again, for the degrees and comparative nature of good, they have also excellently handled it in their triplicity of good, in the comparisons between a contemplative and an active life, in the distinction between virtue with reluctation and virtue secured, in their encounters between honesty and profit, in their balancing of virtue with virtue, and the like; so as this part deserveth to be reported for excellently laboured. ”

“ The Good That Is in You. Giving Your Best to the World. Giving Much and Receiving Much. And All Things Shall Be Added. When Life is Worth Living. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. To Know and Think the Truth. ”

“ It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? ”

“ Therefore, for your own good here today in success, prosperity and happiness as well as in health, peace and harmony, begin to pronounce over everything in life, All is Good. If you have any misunderstandings, All is Good. If you have any losses, All is Good, any reverses, All is Good, any sorrow, All is Good, any inharmony, All is Good. In everything at all that is out of perfection you must recognize only the good. ”

“ The object is in a compound proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, and the correspondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a social being.
The disposition in an individual to promote this object is called virtue; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and justice, are correlative with these two great portions of the only true object of all voluntary actions of a human being. Benevolence is the desire to be the author of good, and justice the apprehension of the manner in which good ought to be done. ”

“ The inducements to virtue are, in his view, our humane sentiments, on the one hand, and our self-love, or prudence, on the other; the two classes of motives conspiring to promote both our own good and the good of mankind. ”

“ As all beautiful and all true things refer themselves, these to a Unity which is absolute TRUTH, and those to a Unity which is absolute BEAUTY, so all the moral principles centre in a single principle, which is THE GOOD. Thus we arrive at the conception of THE GOOD in itself, the ABSOLUTE Good, superior to all particular duties, and determinate in those duties. ”

“ But if you make things first which were meant to be second, then you make what was meant to be food 'ashes.' They are all good in their place. Wealth is good; wisdom is good; success is good; love is good. ”

“ In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding one’s self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue. ”

“ Hence what is true is good, what is useful is good, what is fair is good, what is right is good; and the true, the useful, the fair, and the right are intertwined and circle about man like a noble sisterhood, to waken him to life, and to urge him toward God, the supreme good, whose being is power, wisdom, love without limit. The degree of goodness in all things is measured by their approach to this absolute Being. Hence the greater our strength, wisdom, and love, the greater our good, the richer and more perfect our life. ”

“ He should consider the bearing of all these things which have been mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue; he should know what the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are the good and evil consequences of noble and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dulness, and of all the natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation of them when conjoined ”

“ I have now completed my examination into the nature of those great positive goods, which do not appear to include among their constituents anything positively evil or ugly, though they include much which is in itself indifferent. ”

“ All persons are just, through Justice — wise, through Wisdom — good, through Goodness or the Good — beautiful, through Beauty or the Beautiful. Now Justice, Wisdom, Goodness, Beauty or the Beautiful, must each be something. ”

“ A man shall be satisfied with good (that is, he shall gain present comfort, that inward pleasure which is truly satisfying) by the fruit of his mouth, by the good he does with his pious discourse and prudent advice. While we are teaching others we may ourselves learn, and feed on the bread of life we break to others. 2. That good works, much more, will be abundantly rewarded: The recompence of a man's hands for all his work and labour of love, all he has done for the glory of God and the good of his generation, shall be rendered unto him, and he shall reap as he has sown. ”

“ The wisdom of goodness, or virtue. 1. Is absolutely and without any limitation good, absolutely and without any limitation useful and desirable. It alone can never be misapplied, can never be criminal. This we cannot pronounce of any other good. Riches may be a snare, honours a burden, even the endowments of the mind may be a snare to us. ”

“ How rich is this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things!
Set around you small, good, perfect things, you higher men. Their golden maturity heals the heart. The perfect teaches one to hope. ”

“ It will make you do it speedily, without unwilling backwardness and delay. 6. It will make you do it constantly to your lives' end. 7. It will make you pinch your own flesh, and suffer somewhat yourselves to do good to others. 8. It will make you labour in it as your trade, and not only consent that others do good at your charge. 9. It will make you glad when good is done, and not to grudge at what it cost you. 10. In a word, it will make your neighbours to be to you as yourselves, and the pleasing of God to be above yourselves, and therefore to be as glad to do good, as to receive it. ”

“ Now we must ask these persons the following questions: Whether to desire what is good is virtuous or vicious; and whether the desire to run in order to reach the goal in the pursuit of what is good be worthy of praise or censure? ”

“ We might, then, perhaps, be entitled to infer that in a few instances, where it was not obvious whether a thing was good or not but was obvious that it was willed in the way required, the thing was really good, since it had the property which in all other instances we had found to be accompanied by goodness. ”

“ And the vices are ignorance of those things of which the virtues are the knowledge.
LV. Good, looked at in a general way, is some advantage, with the more particular distinction, being partly what is actually useful, partly what is not contrary to utility. On which account virtue itself, and the good which partakes of virtue are spoken of in a threefold view of the subject. First, as to what kind of good it is, and from what it ensues; as, for instance, in an action done according to virtue. Secondly, as to the agent, in the case of a good man who partakes of virtue.... ”

“ In another way the useful is called good, not on account of its pleasing, but of its doing good. All which, therefore, is righteousness, being a good thing, both as virtue and as desirable for its own sake, and not as giving pleasure ”

“ Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. ”

“ And I should like to know whether I may say the same of another proposition—that not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued?
Cr. Yes, that also remains unshaken.
Soc. And a good life is equivalent to a just and honourable one—that holds also? ”

“ I answer that, For imperfect happiness, such as can be had in this life, external goods are necessary, not as belonging to the essence of happiness, but by serving as instruments to happiness, which consists in an operation of virtue, as stated in Ethic. i, 13. For man needs in this life, the necessaries of the body, both for the operation of contemplative virtue, and for the operation of active virtue, for which latter he needs also many other things by means of which to perform its operations. ”

“ V First let us begin at the outward goods, which are neither the proper goods of the soul nor those of the body, but are called the goods of fortune, and serve for the sustenance and commodity of man for the short season of this present life, as worldly substance, offices, honour, and authority. ”