Quotes About Integrity

Who, under pressing temptations to lie, adheres to truth, nor to the profane betrays aught of a sacred trust, is near the summit of wisdom and virtue.

He alone is a man, who can resist the genius of the age, the tone of fashion, with vigorous simplicity and modest courage.

The friend of order has made half his way to virtue.

The more uniform a man's voice, step, manner of conversation, handwriting--the more quiet, uniform, settled, his actions, his character.

Who is open without levity; generous without waste; secret without craft; humble without meanness; bold without insolence; cautious without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical--is made to pass the ordeal of honor, friendship, virtue.

Can he love truth who can take a knave to his bosom?

The loss of taste for what is right is loss of all right taste.

Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps, are all a clear because to a clear why.

Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.

Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once.

Who has a daring eye tells downright truths and downright lies.

Dread more the blunderer's friendship than the calumniator's enmity.

The ambitious sacrifices all to what he terms honor, as the miser all to money.

Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

Who despises all that is despicable is made to be impressed with all that is grand.

The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and color through all the fluctuation of things.

Who has witnessed one free and unconstrained act of yours, has witnessed all.

Who is respectable when thinking himself alone and free from observation will be so before the eye of all the world.

Nothing is more revealing of an age than its hypocrisies.

Propriety was a rigid master, but one that must be obeyed if one wanted to keep a sterling reputation.

We do some things because we should, whether it feels good or not. Nonetheless, doing what we should ought not necessarily feel bad.

We might be mad or stupid, but at least we were serious.

How can any man be free without a soul of his own, that he believes in and won't sell at any price?

Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies.