Quotes About Integrity

When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

I realised something important: whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.

You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own.

In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one.

If I want to say no, I will, but for the right reasons. If I want to say yes, I will, but for the right reasons. Leave the consequences. Leave the finale. Leave the grand statements. The simplicity of feeling should not be taxed. I can't work out what this will cost or what either of us owe. The admission charge is never on the door, but you are open and I want to enter. Let me in. You do.

When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation. ... When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities.

Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. To fit it, force it, function it, to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should. We are all historians in our small way.

I don't like to think of myself as an insincere person but if I say I love you and I don't mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way for you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things?

My dear, you are in danger of being burned by your own flame.

What you risk reveals what you value. In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one.

I won't eat what I can't kill. It seems shoddy, hypocritical.

Lonely cries, and she was lonely, not for friends but for a time that hadn't been violated.

I've flown about a bit and picked up a few things and I'll give one of them to you for nothing. You don't run out on the woman you love.

I began to feel like Sarpi, that Venetian priest and diplomat, who said he never told a lie but didn't tell the truth to everyone.

It was a good time. To the pure all things are pure…

I may not spare you, I said. For I would rather spare all those who would come into contact with you, were you to be left alive.

Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity.

what you risk reveals what you value...

Take no notice of anyone you don't respect.

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

He who blushes is already guilty.

To this motive which encourages me is added another which made up my mind: after I have upheld, according to my natural intelligence, the side of truth, no matter what success I have, there is a prize which I cannot fail to win. I will find it in the depths of my heart.

How could I become wicked, when I had nothing but examples of gentleness before my eyes, and none around me but the best people in the world?

To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour and persistence.