Quotes About Honesty

There are those who have nothing chaste but their ears, and nothing virtuous but their tongues.

I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind-hearted, fat, benevolent people do.

Fair words butter no parsnips.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another there is nothing left of the other.

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.

You've got to be willing to stay committed to someone over the long run, and sometimes it doesn't work out. But often if you become real honest with yourself and honest with each other, and put aside whatever personal hurt and disappointment you have to really understand yourself and your spouse, it can be the most wonderful experience you've ever had.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth the publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to get sensible men to read it.

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down.

It is a sobering thought that each of us gives his hearers and his readers a chance to look into the inner working of his mind when he speaks or writes.

The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do - well, that's memoirs.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Peace is not the mere absence of war. It is a positive condition of justice. It is the sister of charity and mercy. It is the offspring of honesty and truth. It is the triumph of principle.

There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

A man can fool you with his mind, and his Soul and his Heart, but if you follow his feet you will pretty near find out where he is going.

Do not be wise in words — be wise in deeds.

When deeds speak, words are nothing.

It is the truth, but not the whole truth; and half a truth is as bad as a lie.