Disingenuousness

“ 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. ”

“ For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. ”

“ But the very same extravagancies and showy paradoxes, when caught up by inferior spirits, presently lose their garb, not only of beauty but of decency, and show themselves in the loathsome nakedness of error. ”

“ There is no doubt that I should have seen light much sooner if I had not laboured under so many prejudices. There was in my mind a curtain dividing truth from error, and reason alone could draw it aside, but that poor reason—I had been taught to fear it, to repulse it, as if its bright flame would have devoured, instead of enlightening me. ”

“ Perhaps they are destitute of grimace, mystery, refinements, shrugs, dissimulation, and reserve, and the other accomplishments of courtiers: But as these are only masks to conceal the absence of honesty and sense, the people, who possess as they do the substance, have reason to despise such insipid and contemptible shadows. ”

“ Every day I exist, I the more fervently [102] congratulate myself upon having forsaken the deceitful splendour of a false ambition, for wherever I look around among those who belong to that undeservedly honoured section of society I was forced to leave in disgust, I observe so much of envy, inquietude, pride, folly, hatred, ignorance, ambition, and tyranny, I wonder that such things the prejudices of custom can regard with homage. ”

“ For, do not deceive yourself: what constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls and of modern books is not the lying, but the innocence which is part and parcel of their intellectual dishonesty. ”

“ It is not in written words, but by the hundred modifications that looks make and tone, and denial of the full sense of the very words used, that one can reconcile the struggle between sincerity and diffidence, between the persuasion that I am in the right, and that as deep though not so vivid conviction, that it may be the positiveness of ignorance rather than the certainty of insight. ”

“ Those who are attempting, sir, to deceive others, and whose character is exalted, in their own opinion, in proportion to the success of their endeavours, have surely a sense of shame, though they have none of virtue, and cannot, without pain, find their artifices detected, and themselves made the objects of ridicule, by those stratagems which they employ for the deception of others. ”

“ Where would I be if I had taken to heart the criticisms of the degenerates on 'Degeneration?' I sit back and laugh at them for holding a hand mirror up to their faces and unconsciously crying out 'I see a fool!' To understand great truths,—and great truths are seldom popular,—one must bring a willing mind. ”

“ From the low-minded, from the uncultivated, from the unrefined in mind and manner, and such there are in the highest class of society as well as in the less-favoured, he shrank away in secret disgust or weariness. ”

“ Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. ”

“ How many misnomers there are in the world; this society considers itself the mode and paragon of manners and of fashion—the world par excellence; and yet the members of it are always doing or saying something to offend the feelings of each other. Why was a being like myself thrown amongst them? one who sees their falsehood and folly, and yet cannot escape from it. ”

“ By some, indeed, this species of hypocrisy has been practised with such skill as to deceive superficial observers, though it can deceive even those but for a moment.—Looks which do not correspond with the heart, cannot be assumed without labour, nor continued without pain; the motive to relinquish them must, therefore, soon preponderate, and the aspect and apparel of the visit will be laid by together; the smiles and languishments of art will vanish, and the fierceness of rage, or the gloom of discontent, will either obscure or destroy all the elegance of symmetry and complexion. ”

“ To repress the excess and extravagance whereof, nothing in way of discourse can serve better than a plain declaration when and how such a practice is allowable or tolerable; when it is wicked and vain, unworthy of a man endued with reason, and pretending to honesty or honour. ”

“ That which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with its gods and heroes and mankind. Men contemplate distinctions, because they are stupefied with ignorance." "The words I and mine constitute ignorance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Out of the uneasiness that we feel in the presence of dissimulation and insincerity has arisen the value we place on sincerity, frankness and honesty. To be accused of insincerity or dishonesty of motive and act is fiercely resented. ”

“ For, let one just ask oneself fairly: "Why wilt thou not deceive?" especially if it should seem—and it does seem—as if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view to error, deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous πολύτροποι. ”

“ Can we not then keep the golden mean between negation, which denies all, and credulity, which accepts all? Is it rational to deny everything that we cannot understand, or, on the contrary, to believe all the follies that morbid imaginations give birth to, one after another? Can we not possess at once the humility which becomes the weak and the dignity which becomes the strong? ”

“ I was deceived; vulgar minds dislike serious reasoning; if some noble truth start up, they applaud for a moment, but the next withdraw their notice, or scruple not to attempt to shine by questioning, or aiming to place it in some ludicrous point of view. ”

“ To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, or to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehoods of his assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of human nature and of human life. ”

“ How is he to bear up against his disappointments from within, his mortification from without? the great ideas he has and cannot grasp, and all the forms of ignorance that sting him, from stupid insensibility down to clever, shallow criticism? ”

“ You must have glanced at the idle words of that faithless person—words that are wholly motivated by selfish and personal interests. They are so futile, senseless and absurd that even the babes of this glorious Dispensation, rocked in their cradles, would recognize how vain and preposterous, how impregnated with subtle machinations they are. ”

“ It is the attempt of vanity to repress this conviction, to make the mind contented with low degrees of knowledge, to puff it up with shewy accomplishments, because, like all despotic governments, her sway is built upon the ignorance and weakness of the subject. ”

“ It may be justly denominated the intermediate state between the two conditions in human life, over which the evil spirit of deception presides—investing the character with imaginary charms—softening down rugged and uncouth tempers into the smoothness of the most subduing tenderness—curbing restless and ungovernable passions with the restraints of a crafty policy—and giving such a fascination to external graces, that they are received as substitutes for the most solid and substantial virtues. ”

“ The reason is, I replied, that you attribute some profound meaning to my words; but I am only saying that deception, or being deceived or uninformed about the highest realities in the highest part of themselves, which is the soul, and in that part of them to have and to hold the lie, is what mankind least like;—that, I say, is what they utterly detest. ”

“ For, besides that a loose in mirth and jests affects their dignity, and weakens its awe, their words are all thought to have design in them, and are readily caught up and misapplied, especially where they seem any way to relate to their own power, or to the persons of men. ”

“ Every day and hour bears living witness of the falsehood of this slander, the more false because spoken of a race peculiarly affectionate, and strong, vivacious and vehement, in the expression of their feelings. ”

“ Now, to these three pretexts, let us oppose three incontrovertible truths. To the pretext of the lightness of the faults; that the more the faults which you censure are light, the more is the slander unjust: — first truth. To the pretext of the public notoriety; that the more the faults of our brethren are known, the more cruel is the slander which censures them: — second truth. To the pretext of zeal; that the same charity, which, in piety, makes us hate sinners, makes us likewise cover the multitude of their faults: — last truth. ”

“ Sir, I never saw a man that wenched soberly and discreetly, that ever left it off; the decency observed in the practice hides, even from the sinner, the iniquity of it. They pursue it, not that their appetites hurry 'em away, but, I warrant you, because 'tis their opinion they may do it. ”

“ What ought to be is, such is the simple rule. The rest is sham, false, unworthy of the thinking man's attention, except as the delusive and misleading falsehood from which the thinker should try to emancipate himself and others. ”

“ Wrongly men complain of experience, which {13} with great railing they accuse of falsehood. Leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. Wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations. ”

“ For 'tis a Ladies contumely, Sir,
To have a Lord an Ignorant; then the worlds voice
Will deem her for a wanton, e'r she taste on't:
But to deceive a wise man, to whose circumspection,
The world resigns it self, with all his envy;
'Tis less dishonor to us [then] to fall,
Because his believ'd wisdom keeps out all. ”

“ There needs no more than simple denial from me to rebut the calumnies of the malevolent, the brainless, the frivolous, the fools, or the dissolute.’
There is much in what precedes to challenge comment, and the language, self-condemnatory of the writer in one respect, if not purposely meant to mislead, is yet greatly calculated to do so in another. ”

“ It were wiser to regard these sentiments as misleading: they actually beguile our eye and our power, away from criticism, from caution and from suspicion, and the result often is that we make fools of ourselves ... they actually make fools of us. ”

“ Look at the prejudices, the delusions, the lies deliberately maintained—and realize the waste of it all, the pity of it all!
Every man, it seems, has his pet delusions, which he hugs to his bosom and loves because they are his own. ”

“ He grows up (incomparably the greater portion of the race) in great ignorance, his judgment weak, and under numberless beguilements into error; while his passions and appetites are strong, his conscience unequally matched against their power,—in the majority of men, but feebly and rudely constituted. ”

“ There is a world of false humility and gross want of self—assertion in this weakness of bending down to the opinions of acknowledged authorities or time-honoured superstitions, particularly in matters to be seen, as pictures or statuary. ”

“ The repugnance undoubtedly comes less from a noble devotion to truth than from the dislike we all have of being deceived. Nothing do we discover with more exasperation, and admit with more reluctance than the fact that we have been fooled or hoodwinked. It is an experience that fosters present irritation and future distrust; but one which, from its very nature, demands the retort ironic rather than the lofty indignation accorded to an open injury. Most emphatically “We all hate fustian and affectation,” and any knavish trickery, especially in others. ”

“ That kind of negligence was just the thing of which far-seeing and thoughtful men are capable; and which, if there were no higher motive, should induce them to rely on truth alone. A very close vulpine nature, all eyes, all ears, may succeed better in deceit. ”

“ Mistakes, misunderstandings, obstructions, which come in vexatious opposition to one's views, are always to be taken for just what they are—namely, natural phenomena of life, which represent one of its sides, and that the shady one. ”

“ Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilised have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. ”

“ In a word, he mistakes an excess of spleen and irritability for the consciousness of innocence, and sets up his own egotism, vanity, ill-humour, and intolerance, as an answer in full to all the objections which have been brought against him of vanity, egotism, malignity, and intolerance. His "Letter" is a concentrated essence of a want of self-knowledge. ”

“ Everything that departs from or curtails this dominion, may it be valued and praised under whatever name, such as decency or skill, knowledge or art, is malformation, false in its foundation and pernicious in its effects. ”