Quotes About Integrity

In all conditions of life a poor man is a near neighbor to an honest one, and a rich man is as little removed from a knave.

A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse ; but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.

We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.

Some men promise to keep your secret and yet reveal it without knowing they are doing so; they do not wag their lips, and yet they are understood; it is read on their brow and in their eyes; it is seen through their breast; they are transparent.

If a secret is revealed, the person who has confided it to another is to be blamed.

A party spirit betrays the greatest men to act as meanly as the vulgar herd.

Women in love sooner forgive great indiscretions than small infidelities.

'Tis more dishonourable to distrust a friend than to be deceived by him.

We confess small faults to insinuate that we have no great ones.

How can we expect another to keep our secret, if we cannot keep it ourself

Perfect valor is to behave, without witnesses, as one would act were all the world watching.

We had better appear what we are, than affect to appear what we are not.

Not all who discharge their debts of gratitude should flatter themselves that they are grateful.

However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

There are certain defects which, well-mounted, glitter like virtue itself.

We can't bear to be deceived by our enemies, and betrayed by our friends; yet are often content to be so served by ourselves.

Our virtues are usually just vices in disguise.

The constancy of the wise is only the talent of concealing the agitation of their hearts.

Hypocrisy is the homage of vice to virtue.

If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are; we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.

We should often be ashamed of our very best actions if the world only saw the motives which caused them.

A man should respect a man for who he is, not for the rank he wears

Real excellence and humility are not incompatible one with the other, on the contrary they are twin sisters.

Patton hated and dreaded mediocrity. A few days before his death he wrote to Robert P. Patterson, who had succeeded Mr. Stimson as Secretary of War: "Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is untrue to himself and to American tradition.