The Pythagoreans make good to be certain and finite, and evil infinite
and uncertain. There are a thousand ways to miss the white; there is
only one to hit it.--_Montaigne._
~Good-humor.~--Honest good-humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting,
and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are
rather small and the laughter abundant.--_Washington Irving._
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.--_Dryden._
This portable quality of good-humor seasons all the parts and
occurrences we meet with, in such a manner that there are no moments
lost, but they all pass with so much satisfaction that the heaviest of
loads (when it is a load), that of time, is never felt by
us.--_Steele._
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one
overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives
them.--_Johnson._
That inexhaustible good-nature, which is the most precious gift 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._
~Goodness.~--Nothing rarer than real goodness.--_Rochefoucauld._
True goodness is like the glow-worm in this, that it shines most when no
eyes except those of Heaven are upon it.--_Archdeacon Hare._