honesty quotes

I suppose all writers are crazy, but if they are any good, I believe they have a terrible honesty.

- Raymond Chandler
  Letter to Edgar Carter, 3  Jun.

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honestyand how few by deceit.

- Sir Noe«  l Peirce Coward
Blithe Spirit.

The most important thing in acting is honesty.Once you've learned to fake that, you're in.

- Sam(uel) originally  Schmuel Gelbfisz Goldwyn
Attributed.

Wisdom without honesty is mere craft and cozenage. And therefore the reputation for honesty must first be gotten; which cannot be but by living well. A good life is a main argument.

- Ben Jonson
Timber: or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (published 1640).

honesty is a good thing but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.

- Don(ald Robert Perry) Marquis
  archys life of mehitabel,'archygrams'.

I'm thinking†how that damn'd starving quality Call'd honesty, got footing in the world.

-Thomas Otway
  Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered, act1, sc.1.

Honesty was a cheat invented first To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues, That fools and cowards might sit safe in power, And lord it uncontroll'd above their betters.

-Thomas Otway
  Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered, act1, sc.1.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

- Laura ne  e Reichenthal Riding
  Selected Poems: In Five Sets, preface.

Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.

-John Ruskin
  Time andTide, letter 8.

Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man's honesty thanthat†of knowing himselftobe quiteloved by a girl whom he almost loves himself.

- Anthony Trollope
  Phineas Finn, ch.50.

Some people swim lakes, others climb flagpoles, some join monasteries, but we, my friends, who have considered suicide take our daily walk with death and are not lonely. In the end it brings more honesty and care than all the democratic parliaments of tricks.

- Phyllis Webb
  EvenYour Right Eye,'To FriendsWho HaveAlso Considered Suicide'.

John Bull has gone to India And all must pay him heed For histories are there to prove That none of another breed Has had a like inheritance, Or sucked such milk as he, And there's no luck about a house If it lacks honesty. The ghost of Roger Casement Is beating on the door.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'The Ghost of Roger Casement', stanza 3. Collected in New Poems (1938).