Citation for "A Good Man"

The institutions of men confer a great many honors, titles, degrees, and awards of one kind or another. Organizations may issue credentials, recognitions and marks of merit⎯all of which are in one form or another recognitions of some degree of excellence, or supposed excellence, in some field of thought or action. But amid all this variety and multiplicity of honors and awards, some of which mean much and some of which mean little, there is one achievement of high distinction, seldom mentioned, and yet, fortunately, not so rare. It is a distinction that receives little of the world’s publicity, good or bad; and for which perhaps no medal was ever made, no citation ever written, no degree ever conferred, but which enables him who has it to take from life its greatest enjoyment. It gives him the confidence of children, the respect of neighbors, the trust of friends, and the peace of a quiet companionship with his own conscience. In short, it is the high distinction of having earned the right to be called “a good man.” He it is who is the steadying influence of neighborhoods and communities. He is the backbone of all nations that endure. He it is who makes life worth living and the world worth saving. And even though he may never see his name in prominent places, yet he is the reason people can live in decency; he is the leavening element that makes possible the safety of property, that makes virtue possible, and that has made civilization as good as it is, despite all its weaknesses. Greater than brilliance, greater than cleverness, greater than “knowing all the answers and all the angles,” more to be sought after than glamour or wealth, than title or acclaim, is the right to be called “a good man.” A good man may have all these other things besides; he may have received many other honors⎯but the quality of goodness transcends them all. In the words of an ancient axiom: “In goodness there are all kinds of wisdom.”¹