Quotes About Integrity

He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.

Before I knowed it, I was saying out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.

All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.

What pillow can one have like a good conscience?

And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity.

I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of the truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agonyof a lie is neverlost. That's a running sore

The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore.

Because he loved true things he tried to explain.

One day Samuel strained his back lifting a bale of hay, and it hurt his feelings more than his back, for he could not imagine a life in which Sam Hamilton was not privileged to lift a bale of hay. He felt insulted by his back, almost as he would have been if one of his children had been dishonest

It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.

When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses. In fact, they come to believe the witness causes the trouble.

Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he only ought to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.

Fella had a team of horses, had to use'em to plow an' cultivate an' mow, wouldn't think a turnin' 'em out to starve when they wasn't workin'. Them's horses - we're men.

Anybody can break down. It takes a [real] man not to.

When I was a kid my ol' man give me a haltered heifer an' says take her down an git her serviced. An' the fella says, I done it, an' ever' time since then when I hear a business man talkin' about service, I wonder who's gettin' screwed.

Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop.

There's no thing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of a postage stamp.

Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?

It's hard to split a man down the middle and always to reach for the same half.

She cared deeply about words and she hated their misuse as she would hate the clumsy handling of any fine thing.

When the first innocence goes, you can't stop—unless you're a hypocrite or a fool.

A reputation for money is almost as negotiable as money itself.