Great Throughts Treasury

"A man who lacks nobility cannot have kindliness, he can only have good nature." -

"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

"Good nature is the very air of a good mind; the sign of a large and generous soul, and the peculiar soil in which virtue prospers." - Roy M. Goodman

"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

"Many persons, after they become learned cease to be good; all other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and good nature." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that man more mistake impertinence for sincerity." - George Dennison Prentice

"Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense." - Sydney Smith

"There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it." - Henry Ward Beecher

"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

"Good Nature is the proper Soil upon which Virtue grows." - Thomas Fuller

"The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time. It gives sense to what we are doing. Nothing else does." - Walter Lippmann