Dishonesty

“ And give me leave to say, when we suffer any temptation to atone for dishonesty itself, we are as candid and merciful as we ought to be; and so far I confess I have gone; for I have often pitied the fate of a highwayman, when I have been on the grand jury; and have more than once applied to the judge on the behalf of such as have had any mitigating circumstances in their case; but when dishonesty is attended with any blacker crime, such as cruelty, murder, ingratitude, or the like, compassion and forgiveness then become faults. I am convinced the fellow is a villain, and he shall be punished ”

“ With this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. What wonder that the young men and women should look at the career before them through an all-pervading fog of suspicion or that the days ahead [Pg. 6] of them should seem to be filled with the struggle against a universal dishonesty. ”

“ Many politicians seem undecided how to turn, and so sit on the fence between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. Facing-both-ways is a popular politician in America just now, sitting on the fence between honesty and dishonesty, and, like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testaments, belonging to neither dispensation. It is a little amusing to a trifler to hear a man's fitness for the Presidency defended on the ground that he has no definite convictions or ideas! ”

“ If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. ”

“ Let good men of all parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, and morality in politics, and there, as powerfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of public sentiment will ultimately be felt.
9. A corrupt public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted—is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. ”

“ When the man you have seen every day for years, and whose character you have looked into under the strongest lights, is accused of dishonesty, and damaging evidence is brought against him, does it seriously disturb your confidence in him? ”

“ Dishonesty of intention is easily discovered by the man of the world, in both, by the tone; and he who blindly receives either eulogium or censure, because they stand audaciously in print, demonstrates that his judgment is still in its infancy. ”

“ No law can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law allows, and religion forbids men, to profit by others’ misfortunes, to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over-reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the bleeding; to hover over men as a vulture over herds, swooping down upon the weak, the straggling, and the weary. The infernal craft of cunning men, turns the law itself to piracy, and works outrageous [Pg 10] fraud in the hall of Courts, by the decision of judges, and under the seal of Justice.
3. Dishonesty is learned from one’s employers. ”

“ It is the confidence reposed and deserved by the many which affords facilities for the bad faith of the few, so that, if colossal examples of dishonesty occur, there is no surer inclusion than that scrupulous honesty is displayed in the average of the transactions which, in the particular case, have supplied the delinquent with his opportunity. ”

“ For when they, in the attempt to enlarge their holdings by a piece of dishonesty that seemed at the time wholly without risk and not likely to entail serious consequences, had been guilty of a wrong to a person that had been universally given up as lost, they had done something which many of their otherwise correct neighbors would, under the same circumstances, likewise have done. ”

“ he who has the truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue, or, if he fear it, it is because the base rhetoric of dishonesty keeps the truth from being heard. ”

“ The mere ruthlessness with which, in this case, the wrong-doers were exposed ought in itself to be a sufficient evidence to outsiders that the American public is no more willingly tolerant of dishonesty than any other people. ”

“ In its narrow sense it means deceit, as we have just said, and is commonly opposed to force. In a wider sense it includes all forms of dishonesty, that is to say, all wrongful conduct inspired by a desire to derive profit from the injury of others. ”

“ Need we ask the causes of growing dishonesty among the young, and the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their garments? ”

“ The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor remains clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere; if it comes into one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Whoever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles. A professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is a dishonest Christian. ”

“ It always pains me to acknowledge that any man, even an adversary, has acted dishonourably. In this discussion I would, if I could, avoid the imputation of dishonesty to any person concerned in the foundation or adaptation of the Christian religion. ”

“ A state of mind which will intend one fraud, will, upon occasions, intend a thousand. He that upon one emergency will lie, will be supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure himself to save a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us that He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. Circumstances may withdraw a politician from temptation to any but political dishonesty; but under temptation, a dishonest politician would be a dishonest cashier,—would be dishonest anywhere,—in anything. ”

“ How may persons working for others be guilty of dishonesty? A. Persons working for others may be guilty of dishonesty by idling the time for which they are paid; also by doing bad work or supplying bad material without their employer's knowledge.
Q. 1297. In what other way may a person be guilty of dishonesty? A. A person may be guilty of dishonesty in getting money or goods by false pretenses and by using either for purposes for which they were not given. ”

“ (I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.) ”

“ Men [Pg 17] profess little esteem for blunt, necessitous thieves, who rob and run away; but for a gentleman who can break the whole of God’s law so adroitly, as to leave man’s law unbroken; who can indulge in such conservative stealing that his fellow-men award him a rank among honest men for the excessive skill of his dishonesty—for such a one, I fear, there is almost universal sympathy. ”

“ In all common ordinary cases, we see intuitively at first view what is our duty, what is the honest part. This is the ground of the observation, that the first thought is often the best. In these cases doubt and deliberation is itself dishonesty; as it was in Balaam upon the second message. ”

“ There is no well-defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty.
The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other; ”

“ Political Dishonesty, breeds dishonesty of every kind. It is possible for good men to permit single sins to co-exist with general integrity, where the evil is indulged through ignorance. Once, undoubted Christians were slave-traders. ”

“ Falsehood, which, as truth means honesty, is taken here for treachery and knavery, does not stand for falsehood in general, but for the dishonesty now operating.—JOHNSON.
[35]
—and my usances:; Usance in our author's time signified interest of money.
[36]
A breed of barren metal of his friend?; A breed, that is, interest money bred from the principal. ”

“ Perhaps she does so because, in the course of the centuries, she found it necessary to magnify her little troubles in order to protect herself against brutal men, and had, therefore, to forge the weapon of dishonesty. ”

“ The want of a general and high standard of morality is very apparent. That dishonesty which is so notoriously and often successfully practised in political life is not excluded from the dealings of man with man. ”

“ We find many women among swindlers, gamblers, and counterfeiters; and moreover, we have the evidence of experienced housewives, that the cleverest and most useful servants are frequently thievish. What is instructive in all these facts is the indefiniteness of the boundary between honesty and dishonesty, even in the most petty cases. ”

“ Dishonesty seems to be a part of their very nature; and, moreover, all their tastes and inclinations are coarse and sensual. Many warm defenders excuse these qualities by ascribing them to the want of education, the recollection of slavery, the spirit of revenge, etc. ”

“ But what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?
"In each of the hot and secret countries to which the man went he kept a harem, he tortured witnesses, he amassed shameful gold ”

“ But if an ingenuous detestation of this shameful vice be but carefully and early instill'd into 'em, as I think it may, that is the true and genuine method to obviate this crime, and will be a better guard against dishonesty than any considerations drawn from interest; ”

“ The unparalleled frauds, which sprung like mines on every hand, set every man to trembling lest the next explosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed to have forsaken men. Many that had earned a reputation for sterling honesty were cast so suddenly headlong into wickedness, that man shrank from man. ”

“ The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of affairs is such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled into prison, a cool, calculating and immense scoundrel is pitied, dandled and nursed by a sympathizing community. ”

“ Let every Christian man stand in his place; rebuke [Pg 20] every dishonest practice; scorn a political as well as a personal lie; and refuse with indignation to be insulted by the solicitation of an immoral man. ”

“ We are villanously infested with legal rats and rascals, who are able to commit the most flagrant dishonesties with impunity. They can do all of wrong which is profitable, without that part which is actionable. ”

“ Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks the administration of justice between man and man, is ruinous to honesty. The violent fluctuations of business cover the ground with rubbish over which men stumble ”

“ The grand foundation of your good character must be Industry, fidelity to your employers, and an inviolable attachment to truth, both in words and deeds. To utter a falsehood to the prejudice of others, argues malice and baseness—to lie in excuse of one’s self, guilt and cowardice;—in both cases it evinces a design to deceive, with a view to benefit one’s self by the deceit;—besides, a liar is always in fear of being detected, and if once found out, he sinks into contempt, and is deservedly divested of all credit—all confidence—and all society. ”

“ If there be error, it lies with the deceiver, not the deceived. And you, my sons and disciples, banish from your faces and your breasts every expression and every thought unworthy of your honest companion, and your upright sect. For remember, if to abhor falsehood and vice be noble, to distrust truth and innocence is mean. ”

“ You who have done any dishonest act, spoken falsehood, dealt deceitfully, all your dishonest acts, and false words, and deceitful dealings, will pass away, but the traces will remain, and God will look narrowly at them. ”

“ But, my dear friend, if such be the penalty annexed to the concealment of error and duplicity by an ingenuous mind, even when that concealment is qualified by the powerful motives of preserving the peace and interest of all around us, what, I ask, must be the horrors of the mind, which covers, with a veil of darkness, the fraud intended to ruin the innocent, to betray the unsuspecting, and to defraud the ignorant? What must be the state and condition of those whose life is a lie? ”

“ Those that design to do ill support themselves by falsehood and lying: A wicked doer gives ear, with a great deal of pleasure, to false lips, that will justify him in the ill he does, to those that aim to make public disturbances, catch greedily at libels, and false stories, that defame the government and the administration. 2. Those that take the liberty to tell lies take a pleasure in hearing them told: A liar gives heed to a malicious backbiting tongue, that he may have something to graft his lies upon, and with which to give them some colour of truth and so to support them. ”

“ Lie not at all, neither in a little thing nor in a great, neither in the substance nor in the circumstance, neither in word nor deed: that is, pretend not what is false; cover not what is true; and let the measure of your affirmation or denial be the understanding of your contractor; for he who deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking what is true, in a sense not intended or understood by the other, is a liar and a thief. A Perfect Master must avoid that which deceives, equally with that which is false. ”