Dishonour

“ Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting, through cowardice, when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. ”

“ To believe, to trust, to rely on another, is to honour him; sign of opinion of his virtue and power. To distrust, or not believe, is to dishonour.
To hearken to a man’s counsel, or discourse of what kind soever is to honour; as a sign we think him wise, or eloquent, or witty. To sleep, or go forth, or talk the while, is to dishonour.
To do those things to another, which he takes for signs of honour, or which the law or custom makes so, is to honour; because in approving the honour done by others, he acknowledgeth the power which others acknowledge. To refuse to do them, is to dishonour. ”

“ Let not these considerations afflict you: 'I shall live despised, and the merest nobody;' for if dishonour be an evil, you cannot be involved in evil any more than you can be involved in baseness through any one else's means. Is it then at all your business to be a leading man, or to be entertained at a banquet? ”

“ But the truth, as I imagine, and as I said at first, is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in yielding to the good, or in an honourable manner. ”

“ Dishonour is like the Aaron's Beard in the hedgerows, it can only poison if it be plucked." ”

“ Yet here, even here, to the very last, no touch of remorse has shaken you,--no shame has found place in your bosom. When proofs, as clear as day, have established rights of another and your own guilt, you have resisted, with base and dishonourable subterfuges, the restitution of that to which you had no claim; and have striven to murder, with words, him whom your steel was impotent to reach. ”

“ If a man that is falsely accused or slandered, shall modestly deny the charge, and use that lawful means which he oweth to his own vindication, he will be accused of pride because he contradicteth proud accusers, and consenteth not to belie himself; yea, though the dishonour of religion, and the hinderance of men's salvation, be the consequent of his dishonour. ”

“ For it was dishonour to live with a man she could not love, whether her heart cherished another image or was merely vacant. A dishonour to which innumerable women submitted, a dishonour glorified by social precept, enforced under dread penalties. ”

“ Let him consider in how different a degree of detestation, numbers of wicked actions stand there, tho' equally bad and vicious in their own natures;—he will soon find that such of them, as strong inclination and custom have prompted him to commit, are generally dress'd out and painted with all the false beauties, which a soft and a flattering hand can give them;—and that the others, to which he feels no propensity, appear, at once, naked and deformed, surrounded with all the true circumstances of folly and dishonour. ”

“ That they were stripped, deprived of all the honours and joys of their paradise state, and exposed to all the miseries that might justly be expected from an angry God; they were disarmed, their defence was departed from them. [2.] That they were shamed, for ever shamed, before God and angels; they saw themselves disrobed of all their ornaments and ensigns of honour, degraded from their dignity, and disgraced in the highest degree, laid open to the contempt and reproach of heaven, and earth, and their own consciences. Now, see here. First, what a dishonour and disquietment sin is ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ III. The conduct of too many of you induces me to exhort and caution you farther against theft, and all kinds of dishonesty and villainy.
I have often told you, both publicly and privately, that honesty is the best policy. None have more reason to be convinced of this, than you who come hither as convicts. You have known by bitter experience, the unhappy consequences of dishonesty. Have not many of you, for the sake, perhaps, of a few shillings, unjustly obtained, plunged yourselves into misery for the remainder of your lives? ”

“ 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 ”

“ Dost thou in scorn Preach patience to my rage, and bid me tamely Sit like a poor, contented, idiot down, Nor dare to think thou'st wrong'd me? Ruin seize thee, And swift perdition overtake thy treachery. Have I the least remaining cause to doubt? Hast thou endeavour'd once to hide thy falsehood? To hide it might have spoke some little tenderness, And shown thee half unwilling to undo me: But thou disdain'st the weakness of humanity. ”

“ Which shall he choose, honesty and mortifying exclusion, or gaiety purchased by dishonesty? The severity of this choice sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain; and a young man shrinks from the gulf, appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life with or without fraud, is Paradise; and any other life Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a scruple. It is at this point that public sentiment half sustains dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Necessity, and pities the thief of Fashion.
The struggle with others is on the very ground of honor. ”

“ THERE are few constitutional misfortunes that lead to more unhappiness and disgrace than a wavering, unsettled disposition. In all its aspects of ambiguous expression, variable opinion, and contradictory behaviour, it is blameable and hideous. It is always open to censure, and is often the parent of deceit, dissimulation, and treachery. ”

“ He walks by the rules of righteousness and truth, and scorns and abhors the gains of injustice and fraud. He reckons that that cannot be a good bargain, nor a saving one, which is made with a lie, and that he who wrongs his neighbour, though ever so plausibly, will prove, in the end, to have done the greatest injury to himself. ”

“ To say nothing of those evils one man brings upon another, as poverty, imprisonment, infamy, dishonesty, racks, snares, treachery, reproaches, actions, deceits—but I'm got into as endless a work as numbering the sands—for what offenses mankind have deserved these things, or what angry god compelled them to be born into such miseries is not my present business. ”

“ Fools that we are! Our sentence is pronounced; our guilt renders our condemnation certain: we are left a single day to shun the evil, and to change the rigour of our eternal decree; and this only day, this rapid day, we indolently pass in occupations vain, slothful, and puerile.
This precious day is a burden to us, wearies us; we seek to abridge it; scarcely can we find amusements sufficient to fill the void; the evening arrives without our having made any other use of the day left to us than that of rendering ourselves still more worthy of the condemnation we had already merited. ”

“ Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the prospect of open shame, of his wife’s disgrace, and his children’s beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide.
Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They meet their fate with cool impudence; defy their employers; brave the court, and too often with success. ”

“ In the confessional every thing is corruption of the lowest grade. There, the girl's thoughts, lips, hearts and souls are forever polluted. Do I need to prove you this? No! for though you have given up, long since auricular confession, as below the dignity of man, you have not forgotten the lessons of corruption which you have received from it. Those lessons have remained on your souls as the scars left by the red hot iron upon the brow of the slave to be a perpetual witness of his shame and servitude. ”

“ Your treachery to me, who have given you my heart, my soul, my life, while you betray and accuse me, not face to face, as would an honorable woman, but behind my back as becomes a coward and a hypocrite! ”

“ But what renders your injustice toward the pious still more cruel, is, that it is your own examples, your irregularities, and even your censures, which stagger, weaken, and force them sometimes to imitate you; it is the corruption of your manners which becomes the continual and the most dangerous snare to their innocence; it is those foolish derisions with which you continually assault virtue, that force them reluctantly to shelter themselves under the appearances of guilt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You have gone on for a long time in your nefarious course, unchecked by any consideration for those innocent beings against whom your evil practices have been directed, and undeterred either by the pangs of that remorse, which must at times have overshadowed even such a hardened soul as yours, or by the fear of that punishment which, though long deferred, was certain to arrive at last. ”

“ Hardened and impenitent sinner! the measure of your iniquity is full: the 321 price of crime has been paid: here shall your spirit dwell for ever, and for ever. You have dreamed away life’s joyous hour, nor made atonement for error, nor denied yourself aught that the fair earth presented you. ”

“ Thus we ourselves would justify, Though we the law transgress; Like him, unable to deny, Unwilling to confess. But when by faith the sinner sees A pardon bought with blood; Then he forsakes his foolish pleas, And gladly turns to God. ”

“ I will be under no obligations to one who can thus heartlessly cast me off. He disowns me—does he? Let it be. Never will I sue for a favor again at any of their hands. From this day forth they shall be to me as the dead.”
Shall we follow him through his career of subsequent desperation and eventual profligacy, or shall we at once draw to a close? ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the Desolation the Law has made, were recorded, and the Ensigns of the Orphans and Widows were hung up, whose forlorn Relations have been press’d into the Service, there would be no Room for those brought from the Danube and Ramellies. ’Tis true, much may be said in Favour of a mistaken Client, in Excuse of Ignorance, Passion, and the like: But where a Man engages in a Cause palpably litigious and unjust, he becomes a Party to the Injustice, and deserves at least equal Punishment with him he appears for. ”

“ How long will it take an individual or a nation to conquer prejudices, by continuing to practice and excuse them;—substituting general acknowledgements of their guilt, for immediately and thoroughly repudiating them? ”

“ A false shame, or a false glory, against his feelings and his judgment, may tax an individual to the detriment of his family, and in wrong of his creditors. A pretence of public spirit may disable him from the performance of his private duties. ”

“ Each felt hurt by the injustice of suspicion, and secretly rebelled with that restrained anger which breaks out, from time to time, in brutal and irrevocable words, grave accusations and absurd recriminations. ”

“ An unsubstantiated charge or accusation, a mere rumor given out as worthy of belief, a suspicion or doubt clothed so as to appear a certainty, these contain all the malice and all the elements of slander clearly characterized. Charity, justice and truth alike are violated, guilt is there in unquestioned evidence. Whatever subterfuge, equivocation or other crooked proceeding be resorted to, if mendacity in any form is a feature of the aspersions we cast upon the neighbor, we sin by calumny, purely and simply. ”