Quotes About Integrity

Fame will come to some. Honor will visit all who work.

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. —MOTHER TERESA

If you drop the lamb, just pick it up. Who's going to know?

Morty trusted trees far more than he did people. 'You know what a tree can and cannot give you,' he said in one interview. 'It's very straightforward that way. And I am not talking about that cruel Silverstein book, one of the only children's books I've ever thought ought to be banned.

Deny it to yourself, but never to me.

If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.

Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.

I've always thought you are what you are and you shouldn't pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you're pretending to be.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible.

Honour is not just a matter of internal good feeling, but also of external behaviour.

But he would never join their number, never be a member of the smiling retinue of former lovers. He considered that sort of behavior rather beastly, in fact immoral. He refused to be turned from a lover into a dear friend. He was uninterested in that transition.

He never recorded the writer or the source: he didn't want to be bullied by reputation; truth should stand by itself, clear and unsupported.

Though always frank, the novelist was never wholly sincere.

The way, the truth and the life. You go on your way through life telling the truth.

When I tell people that she was the most grown-up person I have known, I suppose what I mean is that there were principles very close behind, if not actually embedded in, all her actions and thoughts.

They didn't want you to fake adherence to their banal taste and meaningless critical slogans – they wanted you actually to believe in them.

Integrity is like virginity: once lost, never recoverable

He found himself reflecting on questions of honesty. Personal honesty, artistic honesty. How they were connected, if indeed they were. And how much of this virtue anyone had, and how long that store would last. He had told friends that if ever he repudiated Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, they were to conclude that he had run out of honesty

No existe la justicia, ni aquí ni en ninguna parte.

you begin lying to her. Why? Something to do with the need to create some internal space which you could keep intact—and where you could yourself remain intact. And this is how it is for you now. Love and truth—where have they gone? You ask yourself: Is staying with her an act of courage on your part, or an act of cowardice? Perhaps both? Or is it just an inevitability?

When all else failed, when there seemed to be nothing but nonsense in the world, he held to this: that good music would always be good music, and great music was impregnable. You could play Bach's preludes and fugues at any tempo, with any dynamics, and they would still be great music, proof even against the wretch who brought ten thumbs to the keyboard. And in the same way, you could not play such music cynically.

In James's comparatively simple set of values, a little toadying seldom went amiss.

Ich kenne den hochmoralischen Ton nur zu gut, den die rotnasigen Alkoholiker unter den Journalisten so gern anschlagen, wenn sie sich über die Fehltritte der Großen auslassen.