Quotes About Honesty

Of whom did the party consist? — Of honest, chivalrous, and enthusiastic men, but mainly of men who were idle, and unable to take upon their own shoulders the responsibility of real work. Their leaders had been selected from the outside, — clever, eager, pushing men, but of late had been hardly selected from among themselves.

He was not a man by any means habitually intemperate, and now any one saying that he was tipsy would have maligned him. But he was flushed with much wine, and he was a man whose arrogance in that condition was apt to become extreme. "In vino veritas!" The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.

CHAPTER LV 'I HAVE TOLD HIM EVERYTHING

A certain class of dishonesty … has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable.

It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.

There's nothing of honesty left in politics," said Mr. Bonteen, declaring that he was sick of the life.

it makes me feel that an honest man should not place himself where he may have to deal with such persons." "According to that the honest men are to desert their country in order that the dishonest men may have everything their own way.

Who excuses himself is his own accuser. ..As far as I can see a slander never lives long...I am almost inclined to say that a man should never defend himself.

One seems inclined to think sometimes that any fool might do an honest business.  But fraud requires a man to be alive and wide awake at every turn!

When a man says to you, "Let us be candid with each other," you feel instinctively that he desires to squeeze you without giving a drop of water himself.

I know nothing whatever about politics," said Lord Chiltern. "I wish you did," said his sister,— "with all my heart." "I never did, — and I never shall, for all your wishing. It's the meanest trade going I think, and I'm sure it's the most dishonest.

A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era, an era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit.

I don't think half so much of Parliament folk as some do. They're for promising everything before they's elected; but not one in twenty of 'em is as good as his word when he gets there.

he has not been false to me. He has always meant what he has said, when he was saying it. But he is weak and blind, and flies like a moth to the candle; one pities the poor moth, and would save him a stump of his wing if it be possible.

Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them.

If a man lose a venture of money he can tell his friend; or if he be unsuccessful in trying for a seat in parliament; or be thrown out of a run in the hunting-field; or even if he be blackballed for a club; but a man can hardly bring himself to tell his dearest comrade that his Mary has preferred another man to himself.

Nor would you take it. There is nothing so comfortable as money, — but nothing so defiling if it be come by unworthily; nothing so comfortable, but nothing so noxious if the mind be allowed to dwell upon it constantly. If a man have enough, let him spend it freely. If he wants it, let him earn it honestly. Let him do something for it, so that the man who pays it to him may get its value.

A man in the right relies easily on his rectitude and therefore goes about unarmed.

The fact is, he never was wrong. He couldn't go wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God, — and a man who does both will never go far astray. I don't think he ever coveted aught in his life, — except a new case for his violoncello and somebody to listen to him when he played it.

Some few years since, the basest calumnies that were ever published in this country, uttered by one of the basest men that ever disgraced the country, levelled, for the most part, at men of whose characters and services the country was proud, were received with a certain amount of sympathy by men not themselves dishonest, because they who were thus slandered had received so many good things from Fortune, that a few evil things were thought to be due to them.

Peel was certainly no Judas: he was a man of honest conviction who had honestly changed his mind and had the courage to say so. Nevertheless, the slur would affect his standing in the Tory Party and the next great campaign for Reform.

It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a psychiatrist without at the same time bearing the stamp of the most incontestable madness: that of being unable to resist that old atavistic reflex of the mass of humanity, which makes any man of science who is absorbed by this mass a kind of natural and inborn enemy of all genius.

A alma dos homens não está nas palavras. Amamo-nos mais quando não escrevemos porque todas as palavras são uma mentira. Quando falamos traímos a nossa alma. Bastava olharmo-nos. Sentirmos coisas, mas só o esforço que se faz para as exprimir já é uma traição.

Truth serves only its slaves.