honesty

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
c37d5f6	Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.	misattributed-oscar-wilde attributed-no-source be-yourself honesty inspirational	Oscar Wilde
e1dc247	People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.	world kindness goodness honesty happiness misattributed-to-mother-teresa	Kent M. Keith
09b7101	Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.	honesty	Paulo Coelho
d3a030a	And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.	honesty gullibility	Khaled Hosseini
7fb55c5	Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.	honesty truth	George R.R. Martin
0106dd5	Do Not Lie to Yoursel	courage honesty inspiration inspirational-attitude inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspire life-and-living life-quotes living optimistic positive-affirmation positive-life inspiring positive positive-thinking life-lessons optimism life inspirational comfort-zone excuse	Roy T. Bennett
48d77b3	Anything is better than lies and deceit!	lying lies honesty	Leo Tolstoy
64dd6ae	It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.	truth-telling honesty self-disclosure	Rick Riordan
0fccad4	Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.	relationships honesty truth	Jane Austen
0f611b9	Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.	lies honesty truth inspirational deception	Walter Scott
0d962fb	Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.	honesty truth seeking existentialism	Albert Camus
e3619b2	This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.	nature honesty happiness life love inspirational forest power	Susan Polis Schutz
4ef1eb6	If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.	trust honesty inspirational	Abraham Lincoln
bc610ff	What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.	morality honesty religion decency	Terry Pratchett
add1489	I meant what I said and I said what I meant.	honesty faithfulness	Dr. Seuss
faff16c	The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies.	honesty truth	Laurell K. Hamilton
8c95dbb	Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down.	honesty strength wall	Jodi Picoult
c028bc7	Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.	money goodness honesty riches fame honor	Louisa May Alcott
4dc3617	"The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself. But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit." --	reality honesty philosophy truth sincerity	Harry G. Frankfurt
e045241	Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.	people honesty mask	Salman Rushdie
64117c1	The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.	honesty	Thomas Jefferson
54dd08d	Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.	lies men relationships women honesty love	W. Somerset Maugham
ffe0cfd	I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.	politics honesty	Robert A. Heinlein
b30acfc	Truth builds trust.	relationships honesty inspirational customer-service business	Marilyn Suttle
17d61bf	"There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated."	integrity marriage influence self-determination independence women honesty love uprightness propriety matrimony respect gender self-respect expectations	Charlotte Brontë
e48a7e8	We're meant to protect each other, but not from everything. Not from the truth. That's what it means to love someone but let them be themselves. -Jace Wayland	honesty full-disclosure jace-wayland	Cassandra Clare
c65f432	You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.	lies honesty truth	David Levithan
892c51d	Maybe my expectations for honesty are too high.	honesty	Kelley Armstrong
c47dc37	And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.	honesty narrowness uncertainty	Jack Kerouac
a9e3e02	There's more to honesty than ... than an arrangement of words. They say faeries can't lie, but you lie in your intentions, your attitude, your demeanor --	honesty	Cassandra Clare
be283cb	When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.	influence honesty communication	Paulo Coelho
20303ea	The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, were being ashamed of what they were, lying about it, trying to be somebody else. Honesty was Fats' currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people, Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrasment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out, but Fats was attracted by rawness, by everything that was ugly but honest, by the dirty things about which the likes of his father felt humiliated and disgusted. Fats thought a lot about messiahs and pariahs; about men labeled mad or criminal; noble misfits shunned by the sleepy masses.	lying humanity honesty humiliation lie	J.K. Rowling
1df75cf	What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.	honesty secrets	Jodi Picoult
37eaef5	Honesty will guide you to goodness, and goodness will invite you to heaven.	goodness-strength honesty inspirational	Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S
d33bb73	There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.	honesty love internal-self intent secrets	Haruki Murakami
22d3ac5	You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.	truth-telling kindness self-awareness honesty genuineness	Anne Lamott
c1a431b	DON PEDRO Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. BEATRICE Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it. DON PEDRO You have put him down, lady, you have put him down. BEATRICE So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools.	men women honesty love falsehood payback dishonesty deceit hearts	William Shakespeare
b9670d4	A better man wouldn't play this 'sweethearts' game with her when he knew very well it couldn't lead to more. But he wasn't a better man. He was Colin Sandhurst, reckless, incorrigible rogue--and damn it, he couldn't resist. He wanted to amuse her, spoil her, feed her sweets and delicacies. Steal a kiss or two, when she wasn't expecting it. He wanted to be a besotted young buck squiring his girl around the fair. In other words, he wanted to live honestly. Just for the day.	honesty	Tessa Dare
8fc7523	You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!	honesty muddled firm judgement decisions motives	Enid Blyton
303df68	Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love's path is communication.	relationship honesty love communication	Bell Hooks
403dc95	It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.	lies honesty truth lie	Chuck Palahniuk
949a6d9	Life is warped. I'm just in sync.	honesty life survival	Margaret Atwood
befcf8a	The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...	honesty truth raw memoir	Natalie Goldberg
2bb7d18	Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.	lying lies honesty truth lie stories	Marisha Pessl
be870f3	Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?	honesty	William Shakespeare
924aa63	"I pull back, gasping for breath. Reeling. His breath is ragged, and I place my hands on his cheeks to steady him. "Is this okay?" I whisper. "Are you okay?" His reply is anguished. Honest. "I love you."	kissing romance honesty love lola-and-the-boy-next-door lola-nolan whispering i-love-you	Stephanie Perkins
9b43fe4	You're my equal. And as much as that means we have each other's backs in public, it also means we that grant each other the gift of honesty - of truth.	relationships honesty truth partnership	Sarah J. Maas
0e65eeb	"Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions."	integrity honesty life	William Gaddis
ab2689f	Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves.	greed honesty community	Isabel Allende
73fd47f	Then he had looked on his spirit as his I; now, it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself. And all this terrible change has come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one's self: believing one's self, one had to decide every question, not in favour of one's animal I, which was always seeking for easy gratification, but in almost every case against it. Believing others, there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided already, and always in favor of the animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self, he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing others, he had their approval.	spirit character honesty reflection	Leo Tolstoy
eb82e10	As more people have found the courage to break through shame and speak about woundedness in their lives, we are now subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where all talk of woundedness is mocked. The belittling of anyone's attempt to name a context within which they were wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts. All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being within a healing context realize that it is important to that process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or a location from which to simply blame others. We need to speak our shame and our pain courageously in order to recover. Addressing woundedness is not about blaming others; however, it does allow individuals who have been, and are, hurt to insist on accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness. Constructive confrontation aids our healing.	pain responsibility honesty love healing-shame hurting-heart wounds-to-the-heart discussion wounds confrontation woundedness wounded self-love hurting	bell hooks
2a36d55	"Dad?" "What?" A small bird rises from a tree in front of us. "What should I be when I grow up?" The bird disappears over a far ridge. I don't know what to say. "Honest," I finally say."	honesty	Robert M. Pirsig
112efc9	When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.	honesty truth liars	G.K. Chesterton
fef85e7	"What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face."	honesty	Agatha Christie
ee5a3fd	"What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's."	honesty self-justification self-perception	David Mitchell
500e00c	What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.	honesty hope	Audre Lorde
8e509b3	I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then..	war honesty love despair	Diana Gabaldon
515f804	Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back.	pain memories honesty truth invite ponder summon pains remember reminiscence memory	Robin Hobb
10be694	"That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is "supposed to be"...'Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else."	present fate good future honesty past destiny life truth aside complete forgo meant not part section set survive to decide done finish discover over end path be forget dead	Robin Hobb
6408119	Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest--fractionally more brave, one might say--about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.	prejudice racism history bravery honesty accuracy belarus berlin-wall operation-reinhard polish-jews slavic-peoples timothy-d-snyder yale-university national-socialism massacre historians ukraine poland holocaust nazism stalinism antisemitism jews russia	Christopher Hitchens
0ce5e12	I strongly object to wrong arguments on the right side. I think I object to them more than to the wrong arguments on the wrong side.	integrity honesty debating	G.K. Chesterton
3cb32a5	Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. Example: the Chinese pictogram for 'integrity' is a two-part symbol of a man literally standing next to his word. So far, so good. But what does the Late English word 'honesty' mean? Or 'Motherland'? Or 'progress'? Or 'democracy'? Or 'beauty'? But even in our self-deception, we become gods.	meaning honesty language	Dan Simmons
7cecfbf	In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.	honesty treachery	Honoré de Balzac
5cb726f	Confrontation is what happens when you are less than honest and you get caught.	truth-telling women honesty truth honesty-quotes relationship-problems women-s-fiction women-writers	Barbara Delinsky
d3d19f1	Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.	wealth relationships honesty stewardship openness transparency communication	Randy Alcorn
d943731	"But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the I have to worry about the truth that can be And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?" says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps"--Alsana pats them both --"they will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden - birds at the coriander every bloody day..."	sanity future honesty past truth pregnancy relativism worrying talking	Zadie Smith
098d3dd	Most people couldn't be rich if they wanted to be honest; most people couldn't be honest if they wanted to be rich.	money integrity honesty rich	Margaret Peterson Haddix
5768328	A spiritual relationship is not necessarily one in which two people are smiling all the time. Spiritual means to be above all else, authentic. Real work can only occur in the presence of rigorous honesty We all long for that, but we're afraid of communicating honestly with another person because we think they'll leave us if they see who we really are.	honesty friendship	Marianne Williamson
18b38d7	"In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart"!"	honesty razumihin	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
a4c8832	Pop stars AREN'T cool. Cheating on your husband or your wife isn't cool. Having no modesty with your body and no self-respect is NOT cool. It doesn't matter how pretty someone's voice is, or if they SAY they are Christian, God calls us to modesty and faithfulness, so we need to be careful to not idolize anyone that goes way off of what God wants.	marriage jesus honesty god holiness-of-god pop-stars mariah-carey faithfulness church modesty respect	Lisa Bedrick
b5cd4b9	The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream.	writing honesty dreams truth	Jane Yolen
5d3552e	Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.	honesty song truth speak exist gap lack omission starling lie guilty	Robin Hobb
5d7ef5b	Find one person to trust--there need only be one. With them, share every shame, every secret and listen to theirs... with love. Bare hearts and souls until there is understanding. Of a certainty, such honest exposure is the first step toward happiness. -- Andre Chevalier	trust honesty happiness shame secrets	Nikki Sex
072ab11	A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it's over. Be pleasant but don't smile too much; be sad but don't overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don't let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming.	sympathy empathy reality honesty optimism life funerals society	Cecelia Ahern
b5870fe	Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface. Are you in an abusive relationship? A refusal to lie to others - How did you get that bruise? - would oblige you to come to grips with this situation very quickly. Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol? Lying is the lifeblood of addiction. If we have no recourse to lies, our lives can unravel only so far without others noticing. Telling the truth can also reveal ways in which we want to grow but haven't.	lying lies integrity honesty transparency growth mental-health	Sam Harris
6ed78c9	Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.	happy honesty hope life love confess recover rigourous-honesty heal broken-hearted pathetic treatment healing delusion tragic self-hate denial wound scars	Dennis Lehane
ba3b851	The theologian is interested specifically in the modern novel because there he sees reflected the man of our time, the unbeliever, who is nevertheless grappling in a desperate and usually honest way with intense problems of the spirit.	honesty ficiton theology	Flannery O'Connor
5f876ad	We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.	money business-to-business buying-decision buying-decision-quote earn-the-right integrity influence-quotes salesmanship selling-skills selling-tips sales-effectiveness selling influence empathy trust honesty business-quotes buying customers salespeople business-success work-ethic shopping business-advice humility sales sales-training negotiation	Chris Murray
c0e0f52	Be twice as funny as you are outrageous, because no one can resist the truth wrapped in a good joke.	funny honesty truth	Milo Yiannopoulos
a84c192	My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company.	honesty truth knowing-someone pleasure	David Sedaris
53fd5d2	When you pretend you don't feel hurt or angry or devastated, you're not fooling God. Be honest! Don't misunderstand; I am not encouraging you to be angry at God or to blame him. He deserves no blame. Rather, I am encouraging you to honestly confess to God your feelings of hurt, resentment, and anger. Often we look at suffering from our perspective and forget that God sees from another vantage point.	pain prayer honesty god confess confession hurt honest	Randy Alcorn
41239ee	"You should have seen him," she said. "A real ladies' man. Stuff in his hair. Dark glasses. Fancy shoes. He had no idea how funny he looked. I much prefer men with ordinary shoes and honest trousers."	men honesty	Alexander McCall Smith
839e178	"I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater," said [Sherlock] Holmes. "I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP's, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament."	honesty intelligence parliament class-struggle politicians	Dan Simmons
8e7cad0	You think if you don't talk about it, you can just pretend everything is all right? Everything is not all right. Not with us, not with your parents, not with anything today. And if you let yourself go anywhere real with it, you have to acknowledge it.	honesty love truth self-discovery self-disclosure	Laura Dave
b3a4710	Your Majesty, I am a soldier, not a statesman; and I have no great philosophy but that I love my country. I came because it was my duty as a Christian and a man; now it is my duty to return.	honesty inspirational duty soldier	Naomi Novik

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

misattributed-oscar-wilde attributed-no-source be-yourself honesty inspirational

Oscar Wilde

e1dc247

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

world kindness goodness honesty happiness misattributed-to-mother-teresa

Kent M. Keith

09b7101

Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.

honesty

Paulo Coelho

d3a030a

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

honesty gullibility

Khaled Hosseini

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Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.

honesty truth

George R.R. Martin

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Do Not Lie to Yoursel

courage honesty inspiration inspirational-attitude inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspire life-and-living life-quotes living optimistic positive-affirmation positive-life inspiring positive positive-thinking life-lessons optimism life inspirational comfort-zone excuse

Roy T. Bennett

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Anything is better than lies and deceit!

lying lies honesty

Leo Tolstoy

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It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.

truth-telling honesty self-disclosure

Rick Riordan

0fccad4

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.

relationships honesty truth

Jane Austen

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Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.

lies honesty truth inspirational deception

Walter Scott

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Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

honesty truth seeking existentialism

Albert Camus

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This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.

nature honesty happiness life love inspirational forest power

Susan Polis Schutz

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If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.

trust honesty inspirational

Abraham Lincoln

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What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

morality honesty religion decency

Terry Pratchett

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I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

honesty faithfulness

Dr. Seuss

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The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies.

honesty truth

Laurell K. Hamilton

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Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down.

honesty strength wall

Jodi Picoult

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Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.

money goodness honesty riches fame honor

Louisa May Alcott

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"The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself. But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit." --

reality honesty philosophy truth sincerity

Harry G. Frankfurt

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Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

people honesty mask

Salman Rushdie

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The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

honesty

Thomas Jefferson

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Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.

lies men relationships women honesty love

W. Somerset Maugham

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I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.

politics honesty

Robert A. Heinlein

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Truth builds trust.

relationships honesty inspirational customer-service business

Marilyn Suttle

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"There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil -- improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?" "Are you a young lady?" "I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated."

integrity marriage influence self-determination independence women honesty love uprightness propriety matrimony respect gender self-respect expectations

Charlotte Brontë

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We're meant to protect each other, but not from everything. Not from the truth. That's what it means to love someone but let them be themselves. -Jace Wayland

honesty full-disclosure jace-wayland

Cassandra Clare

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You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.

lies honesty truth

David Levithan

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Maybe my expectations for honesty are too high.

honesty

Kelley Armstrong

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And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.

honesty narrowness uncertainty

Jack Kerouac

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There's more to honesty than ... than an arrangement of words. They say faeries can't lie, but you lie in your intentions, your attitude, your demeanor --

honesty

Cassandra Clare

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When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.

influence honesty communication

Paulo Coelho

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The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, were being ashamed of what they were, lying about it, trying to be somebody else. Honesty was Fats' currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people, Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrasment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out, but Fats was attracted by rawness, by everything that was ugly but honest, by the dirty things about which the likes of his father felt humiliated and disgusted. Fats thought a lot about messiahs and pariahs; about men labeled mad or criminal; noble misfits shunned by the sleepy masses.

lying humanity honesty humiliation lie

J.K. Rowling

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What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.

honesty secrets

Jodi Picoult

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Honesty will guide you to goodness, and goodness will invite you to heaven.

goodness-strength honesty inspirational

Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

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There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.

honesty love internal-self intent secrets

Haruki Murakami

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You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

truth-telling kindness self-awareness honesty genuineness

Anne Lamott

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DON PEDRO Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. BEATRICE Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it. DON PEDRO You have put him down, lady, you have put him down. BEATRICE So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools.

men women honesty love falsehood payback dishonesty deceit hearts

William Shakespeare

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A better man wouldn't play this 'sweethearts' game with her when he knew very well it couldn't lead to more. But he wasn't a better man. He was Colin Sandhurst, reckless, incorrigible rogue--and damn it, he couldn't resist. He wanted to amuse her, spoil her, feed her sweets and delicacies. Steal a kiss or two, when she wasn't expecting it. He wanted to be a besotted young buck squiring his girl around the fair. In other words, he wanted to live honestly. Just for the day.

honesty

Tessa Dare

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You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!

honesty muddled firm judgement decisions motives

Enid Blyton

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Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love's path is communication.

relationship honesty love communication

Bell Hooks

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It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.

lies honesty truth lie

Chuck Palahniuk

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Life is warped. I'm just in sync.

honesty life survival

Margaret Atwood

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The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...

honesty truth raw memoir

Natalie Goldberg

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Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

lying lies honesty truth lie stories

Marisha Pessl

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Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

honesty

William Shakespeare

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"I pull back, gasping for breath. Reeling. His breath is ragged, and I place my hands on his cheeks to steady him. "Is this okay?" I whisper. "Are you okay?" His reply is anguished. Honest. "I love you."

kissing romance honesty love lola-and-the-boy-next-door lola-nolan whispering i-love-you

Stephanie Perkins

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You're my equal. And as much as that means we have each other's backs in public, it also means we that grant each other the gift of honesty - of truth.

relationships honesty truth partnership

Sarah J. Maas

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"Most people are clever because they don't know how to be honest." William Gaddis, The Recognitions."

integrity honesty life

William Gaddis

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Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves.

greed honesty community

Isabel Allende

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Then he had looked on his spirit as his I; now, it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself. And all this terrible change has come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one's self: believing one's self, one had to decide every question, not in favour of one's animal I, which was always seeking for easy gratification, but in almost every case against it. Believing others, there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided already, and always in favor of the animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self, he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing others, he had their approval.

spirit character honesty reflection

Leo Tolstoy

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As more people have found the courage to break through shame and speak about woundedness in their lives, we are now subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where all talk of woundedness is mocked. The belittling of anyone's attempt to name a context within which they were wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts. All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being within a healing context realize that it is important to that process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or a location from which to simply blame others. We need to speak our shame and our pain courageously in order to recover. Addressing woundedness is not about blaming others; however, it does allow individuals who have been, and are, hurt to insist on accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness. Constructive confrontation aids our healing.

pain responsibility honesty love healing-shame hurting-heart wounds-to-the-heart discussion wounds confrontation woundedness wounded self-love hurting

bell hooks

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"Dad?" "What?" A small bird rises from a tree in front of us. "What should I be when I grow up?" The bird disappears over a far ridge. I don't know what to say. "Honest," I finally say."

honesty

Robert M. Pirsig

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When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.

honesty truth liars

G.K. Chesterton

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"What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face."

honesty

Agatha Christie

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"What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's."

honesty self-justification self-perception

David Mitchell

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What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.

honesty hope

Audre Lorde

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I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then..

war honesty love despair

Diana Gabaldon

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Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back.

pain memories honesty truth invite ponder summon pains remember reminiscence memory

Robin Hobb

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"That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is "supposed to be"...'Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else."

present fate good future honesty past destiny life truth aside complete forgo meant not part section set survive to decide done finish discover over end path be forget dead

Robin Hobb

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Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest--fractionally more brave, one might say--about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.

prejudice racism history bravery honesty accuracy belarus berlin-wall operation-reinhard polish-jews slavic-peoples timothy-d-snyder yale-university national-socialism massacre historians ukraine poland holocaust nazism stalinism antisemitism jews russia

Christopher Hitchens

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I strongly object to wrong arguments on the right side. I think I object to them more than to the wrong arguments on the wrong side.

integrity honesty debating

G.K. Chesterton

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Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. Example: the Chinese pictogram for 'integrity' is a two-part symbol of a man literally standing next to his word. So far, so good. But what does the Late English word 'honesty' mean? Or 'Motherland'? Or 'progress'? Or 'democracy'? Or 'beauty'? But even in our self-deception, we become gods.

meaning honesty language

Dan Simmons

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In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.

honesty treachery

Honoré de Balzac

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Confrontation is what happens when you are less than honest and you get caught.

truth-telling women honesty truth honesty-quotes relationship-problems women-s-fiction women-writers

Barbara Delinsky

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Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.

wealth relationships honesty stewardship openness transparency communication

Randy Alcorn

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"But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the I have to worry about the truth that can be And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?" says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps"--Alsana pats them both --"they will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden - birds at the coriander every bloody day..."

sanity future honesty past truth pregnancy relativism worrying talking

Zadie Smith

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Most people couldn't be rich if they wanted to be honest; most people couldn't be honest if they wanted to be rich.

money integrity honesty rich

Margaret Peterson Haddix

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A spiritual relationship is not necessarily one in which two people are smiling all the time. Spiritual means to be above all else, authentic. Real work can only occur in the presence of rigorous honesty We all long for that, but we're afraid of communicating honestly with another person because we think they'll leave us if they see who we really are.

honesty friendship

Marianne Williamson

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"In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart"!"

honesty razumihin

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Pop stars AREN'T cool. Cheating on your husband or your wife isn't cool. Having no modesty with your body and no self-respect is NOT cool. It doesn't matter how pretty someone's voice is, or if they SAY they are Christian, God calls us to modesty and faithfulness, so we need to be careful to not idolize anyone that goes way off of what God wants.

marriage jesus honesty god holiness-of-god pop-stars mariah-carey faithfulness church modesty respect

Lisa Bedrick

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The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream.

writing honesty dreams truth

Jane Yolen

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Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.

honesty song truth speak exist gap lack omission starling lie guilty

Robin Hobb

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Find one person to trust--there need only be one. With them, share every shame, every secret and listen to theirs... with love. Bare hearts and souls until there is understanding. Of a certainty, such honest exposure is the first step toward happiness. -- Andre Chevalier

trust honesty happiness shame secrets

Nikki Sex

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A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it's over. Be pleasant but don't smile too much; be sad but don't overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don't let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming.

sympathy empathy reality honesty optimism life funerals society

Cecelia Ahern

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Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface. Are you in an abusive relationship? A refusal to lie to others - How did you get that bruise? - would oblige you to come to grips with this situation very quickly. Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol? Lying is the lifeblood of addiction. If we have no recourse to lies, our lives can unravel only so far without others noticing. Telling the truth can also reveal ways in which we want to grow but haven't.

lying lies integrity honesty transparency growth mental-health

Sam Harris

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Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.

happy honesty hope life love confess recover rigourous-honesty heal broken-hearted pathetic treatment healing delusion tragic self-hate denial wound scars

Dennis Lehane

ba3b851

The theologian is interested specifically in the modern novel because there he sees reflected the man of our time, the unbeliever, who is nevertheless grappling in a desperate and usually honest way with intense problems of the spirit.

honesty ficiton theology

Flannery O'Connor

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We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.

money business-to-business buying-decision buying-decision-quote earn-the-right integrity influence-quotes salesmanship selling-skills selling-tips sales-effectiveness selling influence empathy trust honesty business-quotes buying customers salespeople business-success work-ethic shopping business-advice humility sales sales-training negotiation

Chris     Murray

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

funny honesty truth

Milo Yiannopoulos

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My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company.

honesty truth knowing-someone pleasure

David Sedaris

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When you pretend you don't feel hurt or angry or devastated, you're not fooling God. Be honest! Don't misunderstand; I am not encouraging you to be angry at God or to blame him. He deserves no blame. Rather, I am encouraging you to honestly confess to God your feelings of hurt, resentment, and anger. Often we look at suffering from our perspective and forget that God sees from another vantage point.

pain prayer honesty god confess confession hurt honest

Randy Alcorn

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"You should have seen him," she said. "A real ladies' man. Stuff in his hair. Dark glasses. Fancy shoes. He had no idea how funny he looked. I much prefer men with ordinary shoes and honest trousers."

men honesty

Alexander McCall Smith

839e178

"I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater," said [Sherlock] Holmes. "I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP's, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament."

honesty intelligence parliament class-struggle politicians

Dan Simmons

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You think if you don't talk about it, you can just pretend everything is all right? Everything is not all right. Not with us, not with your parents, not with anything today. And if you let yourself go anywhere real with it, you have to acknowledge it.

honesty love truth self-discovery self-disclosure

Laura Dave

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Your Majesty, I am a soldier, not a statesman; and I have no great philosophy but that I love my country. I came because it was my duty as a Christian and a man; now it is my duty to return.

honesty inspirational duty soldier

Naomi Novik