Pretense

“ I pretend not, my lords, to be always in the right, I claim no other merit than that of meaning well; and when I am convinced, after proper examination, that I am engaged on the side of truth, I will trample on that insolence that shall command me to suppress my sentiments. ”

“ But if it be not only the wrath of the accuser that strikes the ear, but also the truth of the accusation that stings the conscience, what does it profit me if the whole world were to exalt me with perpetual praise? ”

“ Or how can it consist with his justice to require of men to know certainly the meaning of those words which he himself hath not revealed? [7] ——For my error or ignorance in what is not plainly contained in Scripture, after my best endeavour used; to say that God will damn me for such errors, who am a lover of him, and lover of truth, is to rob man of his comfort, and God of his goodness; is to make man desperate, and God a Tyrant. ”

“ As for the words, matchless impudence, treachery, wretched principles, avarice, and such like, which thou hast applied to me, I regard them as wrote in heat of passion; and advise thee (to make use of thy own phrase) to take shame on thee for having written them, as also for having unjustly charged me with crimes I never committed. ”

“ Whether unmasked by others, or by myself, is it not equally true that I have been playing false, and am now punished for it? What do the world care for your having returned to truth? You have offended by deceiving them, and that is an offence which your repentance will not extenuate. ”

“ Examine yourselves whenever you are blamed, and do your utmost to correct what is amiss in you. "Blessed are ye," said our Lord, "when men shall revile you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely." ”

“ What, then, is the only thing that they shun? That in which is bred falsehood and deceit,—that is, opining, and haste in giving consent,—which is a yielding through weakness to that which appears, and has not any true utility. ”

“ You interest me, Heard. If you deny the susceptibility of a temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic appeals to the senses, and upon the ease with which transitory feelings can be transmuted into axioms of conduct. ”

“ A punishment or trial? Yes; no wonder,
When rich ones scarce tell true. To lapse in fulness
Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood
Is worse in kings than beggars. My dear lord!
Thou art one o’ th’ false ones. ”

“ When we indulge anger at any provocation, we prepare work for repentance. When we practise deception, we renounce the inward support of rectitude. When we seek for the favour of the world, we encourage vanity. ”

“ That certain blunders hurt us more than our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them is like our remorse for venial immorality, only more intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark. You ride using another man’s season-ticket, or you tell a white lie, or speak an unkind word, and conscience, if a little used to such things, never winces. ”

“ All harshness and severity of judgment, all angry looks, resentful feelings, and evil speaking, all impatience, discontent, discord and moroseness, should be banished thence as so many malignant fiends. ”

“ To a nature integrally truthful and integrally noble, however warped by circumstance or error, the deadliest sting, the surest awakener of remorse, will always lie in the perfect faith of another's implicit confidence. ”

“ If an high opinion of our own merits makes us so disagreeable and disgusting to our fellow creatures, how sinful must it cause us to appear in the sight of One who sees all our hidden imperfections; whose eye pierces every disguise by which we deceive others, and possibly delude ourselves, and in whose sight our greatest follies and errors are more excusable than our pride! ”

“ Difference of manner may go for a great deal, but beyond and below the resentment caused by a prompt, decisive, and perhaps imperious tone, lies a deeply-rooted sense of wrong—logically or illogically arrived at. ”

“ Let any impartial man in his senses be asked, for which of these two places a composition of cruelty, lust, avarice, rapine, insolence, hypocrisy, fraud, and treachery is best fitted? Surely his answer will be certain and immediate ”

“ If there is one thing more than another of which I have the most complete and entire scorn and disbelief, it is of presentiments, and yet here I was all of a sudden filled with and possessed by a most undoubted presentiment of approaching evil. ”

“ This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, so as not to be on my guard against deceivers. Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be an anchor to my ball! Too easily would I be pulled upwards and away! ”

“ But I am afraid that in many cases their wider understanding of people and things allows them to handle the truth in a manner to convert it to their own needs; in a measure leading you to believe an omission in themselves a virtue by comparison, while another's virtue may be distorted to appear as folly or even sin. ”

“ Such is the deceitfulness of our hearts, and such the proneness of our corrupt natures to wander from the path of duty, that it is necessary for us at all times to scrutinize well, the motives which prompt us to act, and to test all our actions by the only standard of truth, the Holy Scriptures. ”

“ This confession leads me to the sentence with which I shall conclude — If, reader, in this book there be anything that pleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to something you dislike, — lay the blame upon the old gentleman! ”

“ Prudence deliberates and judges about good and lawful means for its end; astuteness deliberates and judges how it may make use of evil means, and it employs trickery and fraud to perform what it decides on. ”

“ Possibly we once prided ourselves on our honesty, and felt happy in our upright character, plain-dealing, and direct speech; but to our dismay we have been betrayed into double-dealing, equivocation, evasive or even fraudulent conduct. ”

“ Nay, worse than all, we shall gradually lose the perception of what is right; and if folly and sin are the fashion, we shall first feel that they are fascinating, and then begin to reason openly (when we dare) that there is no harm in them. ”

“ Take heed, lest by nice and subtle sophistry you burthen your knowing soul, or knowingly burthen your soul, with the guilt of advancing a false title, or of maintaining, by specious fallacies, a claim which, if shown in its native and true colours, would appear to be false. ”

“ Nothing is simpler than what you are going to hear. It is only the proof of the saying, 'If the world can always discover false and guilty sentiments, it never believes there are any sentiments that are natural, true, and generous.'"
"Ah, what shame, what remorse must it ever be to me to have shared such stupid and malicious prejudices! ”

“ And when thou hearest the malice that wrongs affect the candour which should judge, thou wilt be surprised to feel how unconsciously He who has, even in a tale, once wound himself around those feelings not daily excited, can find in thy sympathies the defence, or, in thy charity the indulgence,—of a friend! ”

“ If the good which men have and feel, penetrates into their speech, and leaves its deposit there, so does also the evil. Thus we may trace a constant tendency—in too many cases it has been a successful one—to empty words employed in the condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moral reprobation which they once conveyed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the things which are in the habit of being said, for the sake of amplification, or in the way of digression, or when men are summing up, are introduced either to excite hatred, or pity, or to work on the feelings of the judges by means of those arguments which have been already given; provided that the importance of the facts, or the envy of men, or the dignity of the parties, will allow of it. ”

“ Those, however, who, carrying on the agitations against it, have had their eyes more and more widely opened to the vice, assert or imply in their speeches and petitions that the vice is not only great but growing. ”

“ Now when such a state of things exists, that the sacred opinions one advances in argument are apologized for by his friends, before his face, lest his hearers receive a wrong impression of the man,—when such gross injustice is of frequent occurrence, where shall we look, and not look in vain, for men, deeds, thoughts? ”

“ In proportion as we advance in this work, its moral aim is attacked with so much bitterness, and, as we think, with so much injustice, that we ask permission to dwell a little on the serious and honourable idea which hitherto has sustained and guided us. ”

“ Shall these hinder me from exposing the errors and absurdities which I see interested men instilling into the minds of the people? Shall these prevent me from telling the people that they are deceived and imposed upon, and that their beggary, and want, and wretchedness, are the consequences of it? ”

“ And their works are worse by so much as from the internal they know how, more skilfully and subtlely, to fabricate deceptions and circumvent their companions; and their works are yet worse the more skill they have in bringing such things into effect under the guise of sincerity, justice, and piety. ”

“ But if all our endeavours to maintain our character and reputation are to no purpose; being, nevertheless, followed with reproach as well as hatred and malice, from an unjust and censorious world; let us look to it, that if we suffer reproach, it be wrongfully; not as evil doers, but for keeping a good conscience in the sight of God; which may be a means to make those that reproach us, ashamed, 1 Pet. iii. 16. Moreover, let us count the reproach of Christ, that is, for his sake, a glory, chap. ”

“ Deceit and falsehood, whatever conveniencies they may for a time promise or produce, are, in the sum of life, obstacles to happiness. Those, who profit by the cheat, distruat the deceiver, and the act, by which kindness was sought, puts an end to confidence. ”

“ In actions of enthusiasm this drawback appears, but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly; in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. ”

“ If what we profess to believe does not make us humble, honest, chaste, patient, and thankful, and regulate our tempers and behaviour, whatever good opinion we may form of our notions or state, we are but deceiving ourselves. ”

“ Whom they accuse in thus accusing us,
With so much senseless and censorious fuss.
The author better loves their negligence,
Than such obscure and diligent pretence.
I warn them from henceforth to keep the peace,
And let their railings and their murmurs cease. ”

“ When I have been speaking for so many hours of one class of offenses, and of that man's nefarious cruelty,—when I have now expended nearly all my treasures of words of such a sort as are worthy of that man's wickedness on other matters, and have omitted to take precautions to keep your attention on the stretch by diversifying my accusations, how am I to deal with an affair of the' importance that this is ? ”

“ Now, if their demands are not instantly and literally satisfied, there is bad temper and offence and talk; their tales may be as false as they will, every one believes them: they have been there; they must know! ”

“ Usually what we call our convictions are propositions which we have not thoroughly examined in quietude, but notions which have just come into our heads and are irreversible to us solely because we are committed to them. Much may be urged against the Ethic and on behalf of hatred, contempt, and sorrow. ”

“ If his reproaches are true, if thou art the envious, ill-natured man he takes thee for, give thyself another turn, become mild, affable and obliging, and his reproaches of thee naturally cease. His reproaches may indeed continue, but thou art no longer the person he reproaches.—Epictetus. ”

“ I reply, that much of that which is called prudence in men, is fallacy, duplicity and treachery, which are much worse qualities. Even that very indiscreet frankness, with which they sometimes incautiously unbosom themselves, is a good token, considered as a symptom. No person is ignorant of his own vices ”

“ Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood. ”

“ The tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires; ... the force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. ”