Honesty

“ I can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was not. ”

“ Forbear, Honesty; thou art a good plain fellow,
And I commend thy wit, that hast such ways to know a knave.
HONESTY.
Honesty is plain, my lord, but no good fellow,
For good fellows be purse-takers now-a-days:
And there be so many of such good fellows,
That Honesty may walk the streets without company. ”

“ Ay, I suppose you are what those fools who affect to be good and wise among us, call an honest man—whose whole life is only one broad varnished lie. Honesty is a mere term for a purpose. Where are there greater rogues than they who would be teachers of their fellows, and under the veil of religion commit the vilest abominations, and dub them with the name of honesty? ”

“ HAMLET. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
HAMLET. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. ”

“ Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in character. Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the éclat in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, religion, poetry, and art. ”

“ Those who have their eyes opened to see and understand where honesty and uprightness are, what righteousness is, and to discern between that which is right and that which is wrong, often rise here and talk about it. I do so myself; and when I speak of dishonesty among the people, I look at them as they are, whether I tell it or not. This is the most honest people on the earth. There is more honesty in this community than in any other community on the earth—that is, that we have any knowledge of. The great majority of this community are as honest as they know how to be. ”

“ When one stops to consider honesty, even for a moment, its full importance is realized. For example, imagine having a dishonest friend. Could we go to him with the secrets of our heart? Could we trust him? Would we trust anyone who might turn traitor? ”

“ We want honesty. Well, what makes people honest? Honesty. Does anything else spread the influence of honesty, except honesty? Are we here facing a scientific fact? Is this a law of the transference of human energy, or is it not? If it is, you cannot beat it. You cannot imagine any situation where your own total force, in favor of honesty, will consist of anything else than honesty. Of course you may put a case where honesty will result in somebody’s death. ”

“ Honesty for the sake of right, one's duty to God, to one's neighbour, and to one's own conscience and self-respect, is a right worthy aim, but honesty because on the whole it pays best is an ignoble thing. ”

“ Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night. If you ask why you are to be honest—you are, in the question itself, dishonored. "Because you are a man," is the only answer; and therefore I said in a former letter that to make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him. ”

“ Honesty, Humanity, and Love of Justice: These, I hope, I shall always, although it be at the Expence of some Scandal, prefer to that cold Principle; inasmuch as I think it a greater Character to be an honest, than to be a wise Man. ”

“ Honesty is the only policy of godliness. Colored men, write this sentiment upon your hearts, engrave it in your memory. Let all your thoughts, words, actions, be controlled by this principle, it is always safe to be honest, as it is always safe to be godly. One has said, that “An honest man is the noblest work of God.” ”

“ His honesty brought him to weariness and painfulness, to cold and nakedness, to stripes and imprisonment, to a hateful reputation on the earth. Honesty the best policy for personal selfishness! Ask the "Holy Alliance." Honesty is the means to self-respect, to growth in manly qualities, to high human welfare,— a means to the kingdom of heaven. When men claim that honesty is the best policy, is it this which they mean? ”

“ I ask for that type of honesty, I ask for militant honesty, for the honesty of the kind that makes those who have it discontented with themselves as long as they have failed to do everything that in them lies to stamp out dishonesty wherever it can be found, in high place or in low. ”

“ Honesty will demand a real conversion, a change in our attitude to ourselves and to one another. We shall have, indeed, to reassure ourselves of the sincerity of our intentions, to begin as the first necessary step to accept ourselves as we are and to give up what we desire to pretend we are, to learn to be truthful to ourselves about ourselves. ”

“ But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. ”

“ Can you show me a detail of human nature which is truly honest? Say, I've watched it all my life, I've built every sort of construction on it. Wherever I have built in the belief that honesty is the foundation of human nature things have dropped with a smash. ”

“ Even honesty in this world of masks is charming. I don't, of course, mean that honesty which will scrupulously repay threepenny bits, but the honesty which will be content to be exactly what it is, without pretence or disguise, and with no additional trimming in the way of either gold lace or sackcloth and ashes. ”

“ But why should honor outlive honesty? ”

“ For perhaps, if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure. ”

“ I know that, whatever inconveniences may follow the deed, thou wilt not hesitate to act justly: affluence and dignity, however valuable, may be purchased too dear: honesty will not take away its keenness from the winter blast, its ignominy and unwholesomeness from servile labour, or strip of its charms the life of elegance and leisure ”

“ Honesty is approved and admired by God and man—by all in heaven, and by all on earth. Even the corrupt swindler, in his heart, respects an honest man, and stands abashed in his presence.
In all your actions, in all your dealings, let strict and rigid honesty guide you. Never be tempted to swerve from its dictates, even in the most trivial degree. There will be strong allurements to entice you from this path. The appetite for gain—the voice of avarice—will often whisper that honesty may be violated to advantage. ”

“ Finally, dear, eloquent lady, your exhortations in behalf of honesty are very admirable, indeed, and would be much more admirable if the exhortation itself were more fair and honest—if you did not seem to sprinkle the reproach of dishonesty over multitudes of honest people more gifted than yourself, with the power to find and clasp the holiest truths. ”

“ It has always seemed to me unwise for a man to say, ' ' I am honest. ' ' Any rogue can say as much and would probably do so. That is not the test of honesty. Honesty, like love, speaks out in service which does not lie. ”

“ You must pay for your honesty by sacrifice. What would you think of yourself, Hulin, if you betrayed me? Would you not lose forever that invaluable possession: your self-esteem? It's not so easy as you think to go against your conscience. As you say, you are an honest man. ”

“ Why, in the first place, I believe there is no probability that either of them will employ the power I put into their hands to my disadvantage;—I consider that honesty serves the purposes of this life:—I know their success in the world depends upon the fairness of their characters.—In a word, I'm persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting themselves more. ”

“ These were the words of a plain, honest man, who was convinced that his conduct had been right, that his demands had been wise, and was ready to return to rebellion when he found his expectations sliding away. Here, as so often in this world, we have to regret that honesty of purpose is no security for soundness of understanding; that high-hearted, sincere men, in these great questions, will bear themselves so perversely in their sincerity, that at last there is no resource but to dismiss them out of a world in which they have lost their way, and will not, or cannot, recover themselves. ”

“ If we wish for honesty, we shall select men who, not being subject to one of the strongest temptations to be otherwise than honest, will incur heavier disgrace, and meet with less indulgence, if they disappoint us. ”

“ It is as much as any moralist ventures to assert, that, other circumstances being given, honesty is the best policy, and that with parity of advantages an honest person has a better chance than a rogue. ”

“ Be true and pure and lofty and devout, and He who ever seeks the souls of men shall find His way to some of them through you.
When a man means to be honest solely because honesty is right, and not because honesty is profitable, there is a perpetual and beautiful tendency of his honesty to refine and deepen itself. ”

“ but I am sure they will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. ”

“ No, it is only by utter and unwearying honesty, by the obstinate determination to admit of no delusion or illusion, however attractive, however pleasant to our souls, that we can hope to attain to anything like Truth. ”

“ The second is with reference to the men themselves; to divest them, if by any means it may be possible, of their roguery; to divest them even of a little of their roguery, if so much as that can be done; to teach them that trite lesson, of honesty being the best policy,—so hard for men to learn when honesty has been, as it were, for many years past out of their sight, and even beyond their understanding. ”

“ And we know that in order to win some part of that great trust we must obey the standards of honesty and decency that lie below the surface and only need to be called to life and action in order to be used. ”

“ We laud the brave and outspoken and those supposed to have the courage of their convictions—but only when these convictions are acceptable or indifferent to us. Otherwise, honesty and frankness become mere impudence. ”

“ He was the incarnation of honesty. The unswerving rigidity of his conduct captivates even those who do not take him for a model. He worked ceaselessly for the improvement of others without ever feeling weary. ”

“ But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits. ”

“ Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. ”

“ And therefore the reputation of honesty must first be gotten, which cannot be but by living well. A good life is a main argument.
Obsequentia.—Humanitas.—Solicitudo.—Next a good life, to beget love in the persons we counsel, by dissembling our knowledge of ability in ourselves, and avoiding all suspicion of arrogance, ascribing all to their instruction, as an ambassador to his master, or a subject to his sovereign; seasoning all with humanity and sweetness, only expressing care and solicitude. ”

“ A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author of "The Shadow Christ," which is a study of the religious values in suffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that honesty is the best policy. ”

“ It implies no scarification, no blemish, no unsoundness, no abrasion, no disfigurement, no distortion, no defect. In ordinary parlance integrity and honesty are regarded as synonyms, but a close analysis discovers honesty to be but one of the many manifestations of integrity. ”

“ The fact is, that any convict who attempts to humbug the others by pretensions to honesty, or who expresses some superior delicacy of sentiment, which, of course, in many instances is actually experienced, had better hang himself at once. ”

“ But it is so easy to cite the old-time virtues of honesty, stability, truthfulness, fair-dealing, etc., as proving character, its value, and the power of any one, however weak or defective, personally to achieve it. ”

“ Should this honest man, as is not uncommon, be my rival in power, interest, or love, he may possibly do things that in other circumstances he would abhor; and power, interest, and love, let me tell you, will often put honesty to the severest trial, and frequently overpower it. ”

“ No form of words, however poetic, eloquent, droll, or epigrammatic, can warp, elongate, or contract, the straight lines of simple integrity. It has been said, "that honesty is the virtue of a footman;" ”