honesty Quotes

“Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.”

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em.”

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.”

“No one does [play fair] if they think they can get away with it.”

“Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”

“You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.”

“When in doubt, tell the truth.”

“If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.”

“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

“I’m honest and tell people right to their faces what I think, even when it’s not very flattering. I want to be honest; I think it gets you further and also makes you feel better about yourself.”

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”

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

“Be honest with yourself about what you’re blowing off.”

“Honest people don’t hide their deeds.”

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

“Of the affairs of love ... my only advice is to be honest. That’s your most powerful tool to unlock a heart or gain forgiveness.”

“You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in, with your ridiculous clothes and your bad jokes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt.”

“Therefore, another prologue must tell he is not a lion”

“Now for every one there should be some one to whom one can speak frankly, for all the valor that one could have one becomes very alone.”

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

“The answer is good things only happen to you if you’re good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender.”

“He lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal.”

“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”

I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.

“To a criminal, honesty is foolish.”

He should be careful. It’s dangerous to be an honest man.

They had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

“Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

“There is no other way of guarding oneself from flatterers except letting men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you.”

“When I find myself filling with rage over the loss of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns and questions should be focused on what I learned or what I have yet to learn from my departed love. What legacy was left which can help me in the art of living a good life? Did I learn to be kinder, To be more patient, And more generous, More loving, More ready to laugh, And more easy to accept honest tears? If I accept those legacies of my departed beloveds, I am able to say, Thank You to them for their love and Thank You to God for their lives.”

“I wish we could stop the little lies. I don’t mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don’t believe that we should be brutal about anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest. One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we say is the truth.”

“The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.”

″The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.″

“Honesty is always the best policy, even when it’s not the trend.”

“JUDGE: One man is dead. The life of another is at stake. I urge you to deliberate honestly and thoughtfully. If this is a reasonable doubt - then you must bring me a verdict of ‘not guilty.‘”

“My answer is simply, that it is because I am not an adversary of democracy, that I have sought to speak of democracy in all sincerity. Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends: for this reason I have spoken it.”

“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?”

“But whilst man takes delight in this honest and lawful pursuit of his wellbeing, it is to be apprehended that he may in the end lose the use of his sublimest faculties; and that whilst he is busied in improving all around him, he may at length degrade himself.”

“For nothing is more precious to me, and rarer, than honesty.”

“Of course, being a financial journalist is not the career I always wanted. No one who writes about personal finance ever meant to do it. People tell you they “fell into” personal finance. They’re lying. What they mean is they couldn’t get a job writing about anything more interesting.”

“But before I could say anything, Myers blurted out, ‘I lied. Everything I said at McMillian’s trial was a lie. I’ve lost a lot of sleep and have been in a lot of pain over this. I can’t be quiet any longer.‘”

“My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were. And if you done somethin wrong just stand up and say you don’t it and say you’re sorry and get on with it. Dont haul stuff around with you.”

“The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing.”

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

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes.

I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games.

“There are no taverns, no ale-houses, nor stews among them, nor any other occasions of corrupting each other, of getting into corners, or forming themselves into parties; all men live in full view, so that all are obliged both to perform their ordinary task and to employ themselves well in their spare hours.”

“Sophie looked warily at the demon’s thin blue face. It had a distinctly cunning look as it made this proposal. Everything she had read showed the extreme danger of making a bargain with a demon. And there was no doubt that this one did look extraordinarily evil. Those long purple teeth. ‘Are you sure you’re being quite honest?’ she said. ‘Not completely,’ admitted the demon. ‘But do you want to stay like that till you die? That spell has shortened your life by about sixty years, if I am any judge of such things.‘”

″‘The only chance I had of coming at Prince Justin was to use that curse she’d put on me to get near her.’ ‘So you were going to rescue the Prince!’ Sophie shouted. ‘Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?’ ‘Not likely!’ Howl yelled. ‘I’m a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I’m not doing it!’ Oh dear! Sophie thought, looking round at the swirling grit. He’s being honest! And this is a wind. The last bit of the curse has come true!”

″ ‘I don’t want to hold hands with him,’ June Star said. ‘He reminds me of a pig.’ The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her mother.”

“I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together...”

“You could be honest too if you’d only try. Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time.”

“As a general rule, most women, before they’ve got ‘em, present to their men smiling, agreeing faces. They hide their thoughts. You now, when you’re feeling hateful, honey, you are hateful.”

″‘Aspen, I know you could do it. But you’re not a superhero. You can’t expect to be able to provide everything for everyone you love.‘”

“Be twice as funny as you are outrageous, because no one can resist the truth wrapped in a good joke.”

″‘When a man consorts much with a people,’ continued Hawk-eye, ′ if they are honest, and he no knave, love will grow up atwixt them.‘”

“Better terrible truths than kind lies.”

“‘You met the Witch?’ said Aslan in a low voice which had the threat of a growl in it. ‘She woke up,’ said Digory wretchedly. And then, turning very white, ‘I mean, I woke her. Because I wanted to know what would happen if I struck a bell. Polly didn’t want to. It wasn’t her fault. I—I fought her. I know I shouldn’t have. I think I was a bit enchanted by the writing under the bell.’ ‘Do you?’ asked Aslan; still speaking very low and deep. ‘No,’ said Digory. ‘I see now I wasn’t. I was only pretending.‘”

“Always be honest about the way someone makes you feel about yourself.”

“I’m celebrating because I’ve got a friend who tells me all the things that ought to be told me.”

“Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers.”

“The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear.”

“The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are.”

“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”

“I’m a copper ... as honest as you could expect ... in a world where it’s going out of style.”

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

“And such things -- A whole mess of little joys like that amazing me when I came back in the horror of later to see how they’d all changed and become sinister, even my poor little wooden platform and mill race when my eyes and stomach nauseous and my soul screaming a thousand babbling words, oh -- It’s hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false.”

“From its earliest days, NASA had followed a policy of maximum, though prudent, disclosure. We had to do everything openly—and soon under intensive, live TV coverage.”

“June has never looked more beautiful than she does now, unadorned and honest, vulnerable yet invincible.”

“I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough.”

“When we talk ... nothing is said. ... Communication is awful hard between people. ”

“An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.”

″ It was too rare to be normal, any true thing between two people is too rare. ”

“Being real is sexy. Honesty is magnetic. We are attracted to things that feel natural, not forced.”

“How, may I ask, did you get so you, you beautiful true-to-you doer? I’ve met many today but can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone you-er”

“Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That’s what makes them children.”

“Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance.”

“He brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He’s an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid he’s too flighty.”

“Honest but gentle communication from the beginning is key.”

“Each man’s life represents a road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself.”

“My story is not a pleasant one; it neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams–like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.”

“It is my pleasure to introduce your new police commissioner. I do not envy her the next few years. The job has few rewards. The best you can hope for is that when you’re finished with it, things aren’t as lousy as they would’ve been without you. Ellen Yindel is eminently qualified for this job...She face a city of thieves and murderers and honest people too frightened to hope. She faces life-and-death decisions, every hour to come. Some will torture her. She will face a man who is the living spoirit of...something we need. She may be his enemy. She may learn from him.”

“If you’re honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you’re forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal.”

“The powerful truth that emerged for me was something Moms had tried to tell me when I was younger--no one else can take away your legitimacy or give you your legitimacy if you don’t claim it for yourself.”

″‘Call,’ I would say, watching dawn break crimson over the Chesapeake Bay, ‘I hope I have a sky like this the day I get married.’ ‘Who would marry you?’ Call would ask, not meanly, just facing facts.”

“And to be quite honest, Mrs. Dando, the last thing Michael needs is to be troubled by petty things like football and school.”

″‘If the ants can do it, Nicodemus says, if the bees can do it, so can we.’ ‘Do what?’ ‘Why, live without stealing, of course. That’s the whole idea. That’s the Plan.‘”

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

“She realised that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality.”

“Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.”

“Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”

“Sometimes it takes courage, you know, and a long time, to be honest.”

“Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

“I take a longer look at the words on her headstone. Brave, kind, loyal, sweet, loving, graceful, strong, thoughtful, funny, genuine, hopeful, playful, insightful, and on and on… Was she, though? Was she any of those things? The words make me angry. I can’t look at them any longer. Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them?”

“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”

“people are blunt with one another, sometimes even cruel, believing honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.”

Duct tape will not make an honest man out of you.

“It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway.”

“But because of this the mosquito has a guilty conscience. To this day she goes about whining in people’s ears. ‘Zeee! Is everyone still angry at me?’ When she does that, she gets an honest answer.”

“Bryon, you’re an honest kid in most ways, but you lie like a dog. Take Mark—I wouldn’t trust him around anything that wasn’t nailed down, but I’d believe anything he said. I’d trust you with my wife, if I had one. I trust your actions, but I double-check most of your statements.”

“No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.”

“There is no love without respect. There isn’t much truth if spoken without genuine honesty.”

″‘There are Jews scattered all over the world,’ he said, ‘and the Nazis are telling terrible lies about them. So it’s very important for people like us to prove them wrong.’ ‘How can we?’ asked Max. ‘By being better than other people,’ said Papa. For instance, the Nazis say that Jews are dishonest. So it’s not enough for us to be as honest as anyone else. We have to be more honest.‘”

“I Don’t Even Like Him—How Can I Pray for Him? Have you ever been so mad at your husband that the last thing you wanted to do was pray for him? So have I. It’s hard to pray for someone when you’re angry or he’s hurt you. But that’s exactly what God wants us to do. If He asks us to pray for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love? But how do we get past the unforgiveness and critical attitude? The first thing to do is be completely honest with God. In order to break down the walls in our hearts and smash the barriers that stop communication, we have to be totally up-front with the Lord about our feelings. We don’t have to “pretty it up” for Him. He already knows the truth. He just wants to see if we’re willing to admit it and confess it as disobedience to His ways. If so, He”

“Not only must a knight be able to use weapons and prove himself knowledgeable in many fields, but above all he must prove that he is chivalrous and honest, brave and true. He must be knightly in every respect.”

“There is no such thing as a clever crook. If he was really that clever he wouldn’t be a crook at all.”

″‘So, if I lost all my money, you’d drop me tomorrow?’ ‘Yes, darling, I would. You can’t say I’m not honest about it! I only like successful people.‘”

“Piglet,” said Rabbit, taking out a pencil, and licking the end of it, “you haven’t any pluck.”

With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full: she became his confessor.

Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that’s rarer than a lover; it’s more unselfish anyhow.

I was never the one to pretend to be what I wasn’t.

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

“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,” was Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their mind without fear or favor.

“I’m not sorry. I’m sorry I’ve vexed you; but I’m glad I told her just what I did. It was a great satisfaction. I can’t say I’m sorry when I’m not, can I? I can’t even imagine I’m sorry.”

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!”

Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!

“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”

“I didn’t mean to be rude, but it’s so comfortable to say all I think to you, and feel so safe and happy here.”

“Don’t have any secrets, Jo. Tell it to Mother and keep out of trouble, as I should have done,” said Meg warningly.

“I shall always be fond of you, very fond indeed, as a friend, but I’ll never marry you, and the sooner you believe it the better for both of us—so now!”

“I see. You’re what’s called an honest workingman!”

“I couldn’t lie to her. And maybe the children have found out by this time. It’s nothing to be ashamed of—we can’t help it.”

We were all very low, and none the higher for pretending to be in spirits.

“I’m an honest man, and I’m strong and willing—”

He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart—that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling—they would simply have looked into each other’s faces, and Konstantin could only have said, “You’re dying, you’re dying!” and Nikolay could only have answered, “I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.

“and desire for good exists, though it’s in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands.”

“You know perfectly well that the best policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to conceal as little as possible.”

“I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn’t tell her you love her, because she knows that herself.”

And he stole, too, then, without knowing it himself, for ‘How can it be stealing, if one picks it up?’