Quotes About Honesty

He did have a natural charm, the same way that Teddy did, it came from a kind of straightness in their character. Jimmy's charm was different, more dishonest perhaps.

Secrets had the power to kill a marriage

The kind of stuff you tended not to talk about because it wasn't usually a good idea to reveal so much disrepair to other people.

Lying came easily to Niven, he thought of it as a means of protecting the truth.

quoting Elizabeth I. Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.

I have said it before, but I don't think I have ever came so near meaning it.

When I'm writing about myself, I write out of a strong urge not to protect myself. When I feel ego or self justification or defensiveness creeping in or a wish to make myself look better than I was, I squelch it, if I can. It takes vigilance. Exposing myself is the only way to go, though. If I'd rather wear veils, I should write fiction.

She herself often felt too terrified to go on, but she had never admitted it out loud

Hyperbole is sometimes necessary to get at the truth. (It seems odd, doesn't it, that we have to lie to tell the truth better?)

I ask you, why is it so hard to stay away from the euphemisms? They creep in, always, and attempt to make the difficult things more pleasing.

It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak words that matter.

Itchie-pitchie-poo, Hank," said Patty LeMarque. "Say what you mean and mean what you say.

I think that when small-minded people envy and despise, then they will mock, thinking it their only weapon. I am not, I hope, a small-minded person. I will not mock you. I'll tell you straight to your face that I don't trust you and can't trust you...

Are you afraid, son? the count asked, more gently. Y-yes, Father. I wouldn't lie to you, even about that. The count reached out and with an odd, awkward gesture touched Alain on the cheek, a brush more than a caress, almost as he would pat one of his beloved hounds. There's no shame in being afraid, Alain. There's only shame if you let your fear cloud your good judgement.

What family isn't held together by a cartilage of lies? In these fractured times, these days of spin, you have to make the family you can.

Iago says, I am not what I am, and for this he is called deceitful, a villain. Odd, isn't it? I have always found him to be the most truthful of Shakespeare's creations. We are none of us who we are.

I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites

He had Oly letter a little card that he taped on his wall. The thing read, 'The only liars bigger than the quack are the quack's patients.' Arty used to just keep me in stitches. Eleven years old he was then.

Brenda burst in. "Do you know what some people do? They charge something and wear it, and then take it back and say it didn't fit or something. The stores don't give 'em no trouble." Her father turned in a kind of roar. "I never heard such a fool thing in my life. Didn't you hear your mother tell you to shut your mouth, girl!

After all, they were just words, and she had learned long ago that a man's actions displayed his truer nature more than the things he said.

Well, too bad, Diogenes: I make no apologies for a life that privileged pleasure, poise, and politesse. Had your lantern light fallen on my face that bright March morning I could have told you, honestly, that I have never been dishonest.

I was happy to see Bennie's liquor, if a bit disenchanted by its packaging. The prescription trick worked, but it always struck me as smug, inelegant, the wrong kind of clever. Most of us preferred to get our booze from honest crooks, who tended to be nicer and more interesting. It's hard to deny that a willingness to risk prison imparts a certain magnetism in social settings.

For though I was raised Protestant, my true religion is actually civility. Please note that I do not call my faith "politeness." That's part of it, yes, but I say civility because I believe that good manners are essential to the preservation of humanity—one's own and others'—but only to the extent that that civility is honest and reasonable, not merely the mindless handmaiden of propriety.