dishonesty Quotes

“I knowed very well why [the words] wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all.”

“Nothing is more deceitful…than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world.”

“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.”

“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.”

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

“Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak . . . ”

“You may lie.”

“It’s better to be sworn to an honest fool than to a lying scholar.”

“I’ll be bad; but anyway not a liar, a cheat.”

“Anything’s better than lying and deceit.”

“For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars and there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonourable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never, under any circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to the moon-should I care or not?”

“After all, it was the nature of twentieth-century capitalism that everyone should scam everyone, and he who scammed the most ultimately won the game. On that basis, I was the undefeated world champ.”

“Someone said there’s no such thing as an honest man. He was probably a con man.”

“In a scene where nobody with any ambition is really what he appears to be, there’s not much risk in acting like a king-hell freak.”

“You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

“By open words A scheme of villainy is soon bewrayed.”

“We’re all liars when it serves our purpose.”

“The Prince and Princess were married. And everyone lived happily, though maybe not honestly, ever after.”

“You could not bribe honest people, but bad people would accept bribery.”

“People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you ‘re not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say, ‘I don’t like you,’ unless that person has been horrible to you.”

“In many ways he is an unlikeable character - dishonest, selfish and greedy - and is often bullied yet we identify with him as the one (horror of horrors) who doesn’t fit in at school. ”

There are little children here, scarce in their teens, who can hardly see the top of the work benches—whose parents have lied to get them their places—

And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty.

“There go two miscreants;” said he, “it is a pity they are not really related!”