A Quote by Joseph Joubert
Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.
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Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.
No one who desires to become good will become good unless he does good things.
Our actions are neither so good nor so evil as our impulses.
Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.
I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that I will fall heir.
Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever.
We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions.
Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.
I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian adopts) and about which actions or moral rules would contribute to maximizing the good. For the rational intuitionist, there are truths about which actions should be done and not done.
And here one must not that hatred is acquired just as much by means of good actions as by bad ones; and so, as I said above, if a prince wishes to maintain the state, he is often obliged not to be good; because whenever that group which you believe you need to support you is corrupted, whether it be the common people, the soldiers, or the nobles, it is to your advantage to follow their inclinations in order to satisfy them; and then good actions are your enemy.
The practice of inhibiting impulses, which is to a great extent necessary to civilized life, makes mistakes easier, by preventing experience of the actions to which a desire would otherwise lead, and by often causing the inhibited impulses themselves to be unnoticed or quickly forgotten.
Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life.
The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.
There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.
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