C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Good-Nature
Good-nature is one of the richest fruits of true Christianity.
All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and good-nature.
Nothing can constitute good-breeding that has not good-nature for its foundation.
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.
Good-nature is the beauty of the mind, and like personal beauty, wins almost without anything else,—sometimes, indeed, in spite of positive deficiencies.
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.
Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason.
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.
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable.
Good-nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it, and certainly to everybody who dwells with them, in so far as mere happiness is concerned.
There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero.
Good-nature is that benevolent and amiable temper of mind which disposes us to feel the misfortunes and enjoy the happiness of others, and, consequently, pushes us on to promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any abstract contemplation on the beauty of virtue, and without the allurements or terrors of religion.