Quotes About Honesty

first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood "ready to renounce them." With this

Do you really think it's right for a socialist to get what he wants by making a fool of an old woman?' 'I'm earning her a lot of money.' 'I was talking about sex,' said Paul, and Willi said: 'I don't know what you mean.' He didn't. Men are far more unconscious than women about using their sex this way; far less honest.

At the end of a century of grand revolutionary romanticism; frightful sacrifices for the sake of paradises and heavens on earth and the withering away of the state; passionate dreams of Utopias and wonderlands and perfect cities; attempts at communes and commonwealths, at co-operatives and kibbutzes and kolkhozes – after all this, would any of us have believed that most people in the world would settle gratefully for a little honesty, a little competence in government?

Inside she was dissolving in horror at them both, at how far they had both sunk from honesty of emotion.

I am simply asking myself: Why a story at all—not that it was a bad story, or untrue, or that it debased anything. Why not, simply, the truth?

When I finally let someone into my narrow bed, the first thing I told her was what I could not do. I said, I can't fix it, girl. I can't fix anything. If you don't as me to fix it, you can ask anything else. If you can say what you need, I'll try to give it to you.

The things you hesitate to talk about," Bertha repeated in her husky North Carolina accent, "those are the things you should be writing about.

By the time that poem became the story "River of Names,"* I had made the decision to reverse that process: to claim my family, my true history, and to tell the truth not only about who I was but about the temptation to lie.

Shame comes with denial. Fear fattens on lies.

Self-knowledge is not sold on the Rialto. And if it were, few people would buy.

Since I doubt, at the moment, whether I can stomach any hysterical verbiage, suppose we simply say what we mean.

Whether romance existed in him or not, sentimentality had no place at all.

I hope never to have to do that to you again. I hope one day you will forgive me. Try to remember, just at this moment, that my trade calls for acting. Try to remember, Richard, as I have told you, that because of your own honesty I can't confide in you.

Religion in recent years has become a political sport, and politicians are more skilful than honest men at extracting themselves from disasters.

Richard walked over to him. It was not a long way but he walked slowly, as if he were tired, and halted, eventually, face to face with his younger brother. He said, 'Change your mind. It is the last chance in life you may have.' Spoken soberly, with all the honesty of which he was capable, it was neither threat nor impassioned appeal but a simple plea, simply put. To which Lymond, looking him in the eyes, shook his head.

A lie is a broad and spacious and glittering thing, sweeping belief before it from its very grandeur. But the truth fits, like an old man cutting cloth in an attic.

I don't bed with children.' 'Rumour says,' said Catherine d'Albon, 'that you did. Or are the Knights of St John all mistaken?' 'You know too much,' said Francis Crawford slowly. 'Shall I amend it? I don't bed with young girls who are virgins, unless they ask me, and unless I am married to them.

Truth's nothing but falsehood with the edges sharpened up, and ill-tempered at that: no repair, no retraction, no possible going back once it's out.

Richard's angry grey eyes … honest grey eyes … were looking at him. Sybilla was not watching. He supposed she knew that however near he might tread to the crevasse, he did not mean to fall in, and drag Richard with him. Instinct had been right, when last year he had fled such a confrontation. As no living soul could hurt him, Sybilla could.

So long as you allow yourself that kind of self-indulgence, you can expect to have headaches. If you can face anything, then face up to the one basic fact in all this. You told Míkál once, in Thessalonika, that you have never loved anyone. That was a lie. You feel for Sybilla quite as much as she has always felt for you.

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life. ( Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne , 8 September 1935)

The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.

The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.

I always think that the franker you are with people, the more you're likely to deceive 'em; so unused is the modern world to the open hand and the guileless heart