Quotes About Integrity

Mary forbade this. She preferred to leave things the way they were than get involved in anything disreputable.

You cannot compromise principles to achieve unity

you ought to be good even if you did not believe that you would burn in torment forever if you were bad;

Don't concentrate on becoming a better humor writer, just concentrate on being the best writer that you can become. If you're funny, the work will end up being funny. And if you're not funny, the work will still end up being good. Concentrate on being the most honest writer you can be, and let everything else follow--because it will.

You can't get around what's right, though, he said. When we stop loving them, that's when they win.

A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good.

In the context of today, this WAS heroism.

God is invoked … and He is invoked against the God of the spirit, of intelligence and love - excluding and hating this God. What an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon this is: people believe in God and yet do not know God. The idea of God is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted.

There is no justice without truth. P.D. East

Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.

Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.

It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.

This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.

It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules.

Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don't know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.

He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.

woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.

He felt fortunate to be with Helen; she had her own ambitions and he could not manipulate here.

Lies of omission count as lies, sweetie—they can be the worst ones.

When the lies of omission unravel, so does the story.

IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT—IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.

How I live matters more than what I do. I have ambitions for the quality of how I live. I have no ambition for making money ...and I'd have time to read enough to be a constant source of information, ideas and language.

Look at the world: look at how many of our peerless leaders presume to tell us that they know what God wants! It's not God who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in Him and who claim to pursue their ends in His holy name!