c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Everything comes by being! Be the love you seek. Be the friend you seek. Be the lover you seek. Be the honesty you seek. Be the integrity you seek.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
For every group, malevolence is always somewhere else. Maybe we understand at this point in history that it can occur at night in darkened rooms where small children sleep. However, surely not in academia. Surely lying and deception do not occur among people who go to conferences, who write books, who testify in court, and who have PhDs.At one point I complained to a Florida judge that I was astonished to an expert witness lying on the stand [about child sexual abuse research]. I thought one had to tell the truth in court. I thought if someone didn't, she didn't get her milk and cookies. I thought God came down and plucked someone right out of the witness stand if he lied in court. I thought a lying expert witness would step out of court and get hit by a bus. A wiser woman than I, the judge's answer was, “Silly you."Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998
— Anna C. Salter
Sure I find it very liberating and empowering now; but at first, it took me a while to get used to the uncomfortably vulnerable feeling that comes along with being honest.
— Steve Maraboli
There is nothing you will ever do that is more important than being honest about who you really are.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Honesty can be a dirty gift. It can muddy a sparkling stream of memories.
— Colin Cotterill, Thirty-Three Teeth
If you're not honest with your work — if you're being merely decorative — then the world will know. People intuit honest work. They know when they are being tricked by clever metaphors . . . by dishonesty in the artist.
— Michele Zackheim, Broken Colors
Witnessing honesty frightens some people because they haven't known authenticity in their own life.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Here it was, the first of many lies he’d have to come up with. “Bella threw a knife at my head.” He’d do better with the next lie.
— Nicole  Castle, Les Recidivists
More than one thing is never true. People love to say the opposite, love to talk about inner conflict, nuances, levels of complication. But if this last year has taught her anything, it has taught her that people are clearer on what they want than they admit to themselves. They want something, or they don’t. They decide to keep working at a relationship or they give up. They love someone or they love someone else. And if they love someone else, it is often the idea that they love most, especially when they haven’t learned enough to figure out that this new person probably won’t save them either.
— Laura Dave, The First Husband
Mercy should be given once to a person and it is priceless. This person then should be very honest and should promise not to commit the same particular mistake again.
— Saaif Alam
You are lost because you have not been being honest with yourself, and your life is largely unexamined and unexerted.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
When you don’t have honesty in love then there is no communication. Honesty is improvisation of the heart
—  anything less is a well thought out and rehearsed script.
I'm an old man now. Old on the inside. I'm a drunk, and I hate to tell you, but I'm not prepared to change. So you have to figure out if you want to forgive me and love me like I am, or run away again. Or hell, stay here and hate me. Just...know that I love you the best way I know how. I always have. I do the best I can.
— Suzanne Palmieri, The Witch of Belladonna Bay
The most precious etchings of caring can be traced not in the scope of its message, but in the integrity of its purpose.
— Johnathan Jena
Whatever you tell; lie or truth, can both destroy or save you.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.
— Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise
If you can look yourself in the mirror at the end of each day, knowing that you did your best, or helped someone out, or took the high road and acted with integrity, then that is an awesome day!
— Beth Ramsay, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
Better by far to live in the truth and know it, however bad it may be, than hide yourself away behind ignorance and habit.
— Owen Sheers, Resistance
There’s nothing more powerful in “Your Moment of Truth” than people owning their truth, their part in a situation.
— Lou Bergholz
Honesty doesn't mean you reveal everything you discern and feel. That is why we have the word discretion...
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
I have learnt that we expect honesty and genuineness from others, while not being honest and genuine with our own self.
— Aisha Mirza
This place has been my home. They liked me here. Not any more. Now they will look the other way. Now I don't belong.
— David Millar, Racing Through the Dark
You’ve one mark on your record,” Tamas said. “You once punched a na-baron in the face. Broke his jaw. Tell me about that.”Olem grimaced. “Officially, sir, I was pushing him out of the way of a runaway carriage. Saved his life. Half my company saw it.”“With your fist?”“Aye.”“And unofficially?”“The man was a git. He shot my dog because it startled his horse.”“And if I ever have cause to shoot your dog?”“I’ll punch you in the face.”“Fair enough. You have the job.
— Brian  McClellan, Promise of Blood
Honesty is vulnerability. Sadly, not everyone can handle someone’s honesty. However, lying allows people to be comfortable.
— Shannon L. Alder
When people don’t respect one another seldom is there honesty.
— Shannon L. Alder
Has that obscenely rich fucker upset you again?
— E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey
You looked like the girl I loved.
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
Sorry, but I have to be who I am. Everyone else is taken... So be your self! Speak your truth - if there are people around you who tempt you with non-existence blast through that and give them the full glory of who you are. Do not withhold yourself from the world. Do not piss on the incandescent gift of your existence. Do not drown yourself in the petty fog and dustiness of other people's ancient superstitions, unbeliefs, aggressions, culture and crap! No! Be a flare! We were born that way. Born perfectly happy being inconvenient to our parents. We shit, piss, cry, wake up at night, throw up on their shoulders, scream... We are, in essence, in our humanity, perfectly comfortable with inconveniencing others. That's how we're born, how we grow and develop. I choose to inconvenience the irrational.
— Stefan Molyneux
Being loved means; are disagreements welcome in my relationships? If you cant disagree with someone then you live in a tyranny and if you live in a tyranny then you are only loved to the degree that you erase yourself and conform to the irrational expectations of bullies. That isn't love obviously. Now if somebody in you life demands that you not disagree with them and gets angry, "offended", or outraged should you disagree with them then, that person is not a good person. It's pretty narcissistic. It's somebody who does not have the maturity, wisdom, and ego strength to handle, and in fact welcome disagreements.  When people disagree with me as a whole I think it's a great opportunity for learning. People don't want to expose topics that might cause disagreement because, if the disagreement is punished then the illusion of being loved by good people is shattered.
— Stefan Molyneux
Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life … all areas of life.
— Zig Ziglar
The deception of others is almost always rooted in the deception of ourselves.
— Bill W., As Bill Sees It: The A.A. Way of Life...Selected Writings of A.A.'s Co-Founder
Complete honesty is not the same thing as full disclosure.
— Ron Brackin
Honesty is not the same as truth. That is the obstacle of the notion of relative truths. I would like to put my trust in the lunatic. He is the one least concerned of what I think of him, the mark of an honest man. I can always depend on him to be completely honest in what he thinks and feels, about anything, no matter the consequences laid before him, however with no course of rationale, I cannot necessarily take his word for even the well-being of him in his own reality.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The judicial wheel is rounded with equality, oiled with honour and functions smoothly with honesty – principally when both members of the Bench and Bar shoulder their responsibilities seriously.
— Munindra Misra, PT. Kanhaiya Lal Misra - My Father
I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere." Liking her better, he smiled and said, "It'll get us to heaven." "Will it?" "If heaven existed." "Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?" she said, looking at him shyly. "I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.
— E.M. Forster
One of life’s ironies is that the more honest and vulnerable you are, the more others try to discredit you as a fraud and a fake. Shut them up by not caring.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
— Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
The older you get the more you realize that just because someone has an important job doesn't necessarily mean that they do it responsibly, or are even good at it. There are many 'D' students running around with high social status gained from their seemingly important positions. Integrity and proficiency are not a given. These qualities can only be proven over time.
— Gary   Hopkins
Life's to short to spend it fighting when you could be holding the one you love. And love's to rare to squnder it with petty concerns." The Apolloite groom to Rafael
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dark Bites
When people communicate deceit, it's called politics. When people communicate honesty, it's called art.
— Gerard de Marigny, Nothing So Glorious
To be yourself is in many ways, is to be inconvenient to others. Only placaters and appeasers get along with other people all the time and that's not really getting along with anyone. That's just self erasure.To be alive, to be in a relationship is to constantly court inconvenience to others and out of that inconvenience can come enormous growth. I simply work as an imperasist. Empiricism comes first. So, I speak things that are inconvenient to others but, true for me. I observe their response. It's incredibly easy to find out the truth in your relationships. All you do is speak the truth. You speak the truth about what's on your mind to those around you and their true natures will be revealed in about 5 seconds.You have honesty in your relationships. You speak the truth about your experience, thought's, and feelings in your relationships and then you do not control how other people respond. Your as honest as can be and you simply observe how they respond. It's like that spray you use to see the lasers in the room. Honesty reveals everything.OK So, if these people constantly sacrifice my happiness, security, and mental health for the sake of their petty emotional selfish needs then I could choose to stay in those relationships if I want. I mean, I could choose to continue to hire an employee who steals from me everyday. I just have to be aware that he's stealing from me everyday.
— Stefan Molyneux
Instead of fleeing God scrutiny, David welcomed it. It's like he was saying, "Look God, since I can't hide from you, since you know my very thoughts before I think them, I want you to fully know me. Be in the very core, the essence of my being. If you're going to know me, then know everything about me!
— Will Davis Jr., 10 Things Jesus Never Said: And Why You Should Stop Believing Them
I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and 
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
Ay,sir;to be honest,as this world goes,is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money
— Peggy Noonan
The most important decision we make is whether to be honestly fake or fake honesty.
— Mohammad Rafiq Teli
It was possible to love life, without loving your life.
— Christopher Coe
I'm probably projecting. I'm a projector. For example: The world is not terrible. I just keep thinking it is.
— Evan Roskos, Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets
We had better share our bewilderments. By hiding them from each other we should not hide them from ourselves.
— C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
Whatever we sayWe're always telling each other exactly what we want them to know...We are always telling each otherThe truthEven when We're lying
— Merrit Malloy, Things I Meant To Say To You When We Were Old
Wagging tongues from prejudiced, sophisticated facade of show-off people can never blemish any honest, genuine, golden heart.
— Angelica Hopes
Most people couldn't be rich if they wanted to be honest
—  most people couldn't be honest if they wanted to be rich.
Was it good?Nemecsek fixed his blue eyes on Gereb and replied:Yes, and quietly added: Much better than to be standing on the bank, laughing at me. I'd rather stay in the water neck-deep until New Year than be hand-in-hand with my friends' enemies. I don't mind having dipped in the water. The other day I fell in there by myself. I saw you then, too, with these strangers on the island. But you fellows can invite me as long as you like, you can flatter me and shower me with presents - yet I won't have a thing to do with you. And if you give me another ducking, if you throw me in the water a hundred times, or even a thousand times, I'll come here tomorrow and the day after just the same. I'll find a hiding place where you won't get me. I'm not afraid of anyone of you. And if you'll come to Paul Street, to take our ground away, we'll be on the spot! And don't you forget that either! I'll show you that with ten of us against your ten, you'll hear a different sort of talk from what I'm giving you now. It was easy enough to get the better of me! The one that's stronger always wins! The Pasztor boys stole my marbles in the Museum Garden because they were stronger. Now I got a ducking because you are stronger! Easy enough when ten are against one! But I don't care! You can even beat me up, if it'll do you good. I could have saved myself from the ducking, but I wouldn't join you. I'd rather be drowned or have my brains knocked out than be a traitor...like....somebody standing over...there....
— Ferenc Molnár, The Paul Street Boys
No matter how many thousands friends you've had, or even more likes you've got, but if you do not enjoy being yourself, then you just keep lying to yourself and unto others as well.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Honesty may not bring you success, but it always adds to your dignity.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
-Nobody can force you to smile, she says. -What? I ask. But I know she's not even talking to me, only to herself, as if she's the last person left in the room. -They can make you show your teeth, but what good is that? Nobody can make you smile against your will.
— Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood
We hold these stories and mad idea and events in our head and they run around and around telling us we are different, separate, broken. Then one day the mad idea escapes the asylum. Most times it’s unplanned. It just tumbles out on the lap of the man sitting next to us on the bus, or it slips sideways into a conversation on line at the Trader Joe’s or it falls out at the kitchen table when your neighbor comes to pick up her cat. And there is a terrifying moment when it first hits the light of day, where we think, “holy mother of God! What have I done? How could I have been to casual with my crazy ways?”But the man on the bus just smiles and nods his head, and the casher takes a moment to look us in the eye and the neighbor sits for a cup of tea and together we move into some new agreements that we are all in fact crazy and it’s so much nicer to be out of the closet with it all.
— Maureen Muldoon
The truth posed a great dilemma for a man who always had to be right, and yet, for all his grandeur, was often wrong.
— David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
If seizures can't stop me, nothing can.
— L.M. Fields
I believe in letting the story speak for itself.
— L.M. Fields
Birds don't need bridges to cross precipices and honourable men with honesty wings to cross precipices of slander.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
True friends are not mirrors where we can always see ourselves reflected in a positive light.
— Shannon L. Alder
People forget that there's two sides to every story. Of course somebody is going to tell the side of it that makes them look good and exaggerate the rest to make everyone else look bad.
— David Reeves
His eyes searched hers. “I’d rather just be me. Feel comfortable in my own skin and be able to speak my mind without having to carry a damned thesaurus. Sure doesn’t seem worth giving up who you are to please others. Far as I’m concerned, they either like me or they don’t. Their choice.
— Leah Braemel, Slow Ride Home
This is a book about fracture. About the experiences that make up a life. About the pieces of me. Delving into naked emotion is a terrifying proposition. Digging into our souls to look for answers that may not be there is a ledge most of us avoid. And yet, here I am.
— Rachel  Thompson, Broken Pieces
Effective, true deep listening and honest dialogue is a gift a soul can choose to give. How easy or difficult that can be depends on the values you hold in your life.
— Angelica Hopes
Deanna's job (as counselor) is to keep us from deluding ourselves.
— Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION EPISODE GUIDE: Details All 178 Episodes with Plot Summaries. Searchable. Companion to DVDs, Blu Ray and Box Set
I'm lucky I'm a comedian, 'cause otherwise my life would just be a series of undocumented low points.
— Kyle Kinane
We are only as sick as our secrets.
— Rob  Bell, The Hinge: The Importance of Mental Toughness
I want to be softened, not stiff. Pliable, not rigid. I don't want anyone to look at my life and think it is perfect or, worse, that I want them to think it is perfect. Instead, I want anything that is unapproachable or harsh in me to be scrubbed away by the salt and the sand, revealing the imperfections, the brokenness, the cracks. Not because I am proud of those parts, but because I know it is real. Like the Skin Horse or the Velveteen Rabbit, I am shabby because I live life, because I am loved, and because it is all work - living and loving and being loved, being transformed, being worn and faded
— Jerusalem Jackson Greer, A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together
I made a big mistake, and I didn’t use it to make my life better. I used it to be okay with a life less lived. I used it to be okay with mediocrity and the mundane. And I didn’t make myself any better because of it.And that’s not okay with me.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Honesty is the great essential. It exalts the individual citizenship, and, without honesty, no man deserves the confidence of the people in private pursuit or in public office.
— Warren G. Harding
It's simply impossible for me to filter my thoughts and feelings. I tell it from my point of view. I'm an open book.
— Lori Lesko
Honesty will guide you to goodness, and goodness will invite you to heaven.
— Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S
If there is no honesty, there is no relationship. The only degree to which there is a relationship is the degree to which you are honest. Expressing your clear desires does not make you a dictator and you telling what you think, feel, and what you want or don’t want, is just called being honest. It doesn't control him at all. You’re trying to control others by withholding information by not getting involved and by not being honest. Withholding information is a form of manipulation. It is dishonest and it’s destructive to a relationship.
— Stefan Molyneux
Don’t be afraid to make people mad. Your honesty will inspire your true followers. I piss off tons of people every day.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
I'm trying to say that I think doing what you feel can't always be easy, but at least you're being true to yourself.
— Erin Bowman, Taken
No matter how many lies you use to disguise it or how many excuses you bury it beneath, the truth will never cease to be true.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Don’t condemn me to the prison of your bullshit.
— Steve Maraboli
You are a victim only when you have decided to play the part.
— Gary   Hopkins
I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.
— Roberto Bolaño, Amulet
When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of newspaper owners took him aside-at a city charity affair which all had to attend-and reproached him for what they called hid debasement of the public taste."It is not my function" said Wynand, "to help people preserve a self-respect they haven't got. You give them what they profess to like in public, I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best policy, gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to belive".
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm. There is nothing but that which we put there ourselves. That is why honest gazes are only to be found in portraits.The faded and weary eyes of martyrs, expressions tortured by ecstasy, imploring and suffering eyes, some resigned, others desperate... the gazes of saints, mendicants and princesses in exile, with pardoning smiles... the gazes of the possessed, the chosen and the hysterical... and sometimes of little girls, the eyes of Ophelia and Canidia, the eyes of virgins and witches... as you live in the museums, what eternal life, dolorous and intense, shines out of you! Like precious stones enshrined between the painted eyelids of masterpieces, you disturb us across time and across space, receivers of the dream which created you!You have souls, but they are those of the artists who wished you into being, and I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes.The eyes of portraits ought to be plucked out.
— Jean Lorrain, Monsieur De Phocas
It is because of the Biblical curse on man's search for knowledge, which has so paralyzed his mind during the past ages, and its detrimental effect upon progress, that makes the Bible the most wicked, the most detestable, the most pernicious, and the most obnoxious book ever published. It has been a curse to the human race.It is the duty of every brave and honest man and woman to do everything in his and her power to destroy the influence of this utterly stupid and vicious book, with its infantile concept of life and its nonsense concerning the universe. It is their duty to do everything within their power to stop its demoralizing and paralyzing influence upon the life of man.We will never achieve intellectual liberty until the wickedness of this book has been discarded with the belief in the flatness of the earth.
— Joseph Lewis, An Atheist Manifesto
Oh, I know that I'll never be perfectI'm just alive
— Maddy Kobar, The Songs of The Gullible Wiseman: The Early Poems of Maddy Kobar, 2008-2013
Worrying about worrying is a dangerous cycle to fall into. People who get caught up in worry when they try to force themselves to stop worrying may want to try a different strategy – acceptance.
— Amanda L. Chan
Are you always this honest?""Almost never
— Dorothy Koomson, The Woman He Loved Before
Keeping secrets from your father will only lead to trouble.
— S.R. Ford, Mimgardr
There is no love without respect.There isn't much truth if spoken without genuine honesty.
— Alexandra Elle, Words from a Wanderer
There are no whole truths
—  all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Suppose after all that death does end all. Next to eternal joy, next to being forever with those we love and those who have loved us, next to that, is to be wrapt in the dreamless drapery of eternal peace. Next to eternal life is eternal sleep.Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained by the everlasting dark, will never know again the burning touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence will never speak again the broken words of grief. Hearts of dust do not break. The dead do not weep. Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits, and in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear.I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the world – I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds, I would rather think of them as the lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by an orthodox god.I will leave my dead where nature leaves them. Whatever flower of hope springs up in my heart I will cherish, I will give it breath of sighs and rain of tears. But I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful.Upon that rock I stand. –That he will not torture the forgiving. –Upon that rock I stand. –That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime.Upon that rock I stand.The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come.Upon that rock I stand.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to a war they didn't understand and didn't want to understand. I held them responsible. By God, yes, I did. All of them - I held them personally and individually responsible - the polyestered Kiwanis boys, the merchants and the farmers, the pious churchgoers, the chatty housewives, the PTA and the Lions club and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the fine outstanding gentry out at the country club. They didn't know Bao Dai from the man in the moon. They didn't know history. They didn't know the first thing about Diem's tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalist, or the long colonialism of the French - this was all too damn complicated, it required some reading - but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.
— Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
I have learned that if you fake your life it will kill you slowly, terribly and cause the most pain for everyone. You try to do the right thing, not hurt anyone, conform to what love is supposed to be and what it is supposed to look like, but in the end it destroys you. It eats away at your heart and soul like acid. You slowly destroy those around you that you say you love, and you slowly destroy yourself.
— Mark D'Arbanville, The Naked Husband
I do believe you think what now you speak,But what we do determine oft we break.Purpose is but the slave to memory,Of violent birth, but poor validity,Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.Most necessary ’tis that we forgetTo pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.What to ourselves in passion we propose,The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
— William Shakespeare
I'd rather die holding on to the love I believe in, than to live embracing a love that's a lie.
— Stephan Labossiere
You cannot run away from the truth because truth will find you.
— ColoZeus Benz
I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today would have been nothing but a fanatic at the time of the League.* One must not write for such readers, if one wishes to live beyond one’s own age.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
No one, by swearing, makes themselves an ounce more honest; any more than a man makes himself wealthy by counting his gold. Oaths may make a liar a liar yet again, having lied about the oath as well. But it cannot alter the worth of an honest man's word.
— Jake Yaniak, The Punishment of the Gods
Oh honey, have you learned nothing from these plays? Ain't such a line between faking and being.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
The world has given me a good life since then, I won't deny it, but sometimes I hate the world, anyway. Dick Cheney, that apologist for water boarding and for too long chief preacher in the Holy Church of Whatever it Takes, got a brand-new heart while I was writing this - how about that? He lives on; other people have died.
— Stephen King, Joyland
It is not possible to be intellectually honest and believe in gods. And it is not possible to believe in gods and be a true scientist.
— Peter   Atkins
Also, I’m not going to bedevastated or anything either way. I’m not that kind of person. I just think if you don’t say thehonest thing, sometimes the honest thing never becomes true, you know, and I—” she says,but then I hold up my finger, because I need to hear the thing she just said, and she talks toofast for me to keep up. I keep holding up my hand, thinking if you don’t say the honest thing, itnever becomes true.
— David Levithan
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.
— David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
You don't mince words.""Just garlic.
— Joan Bauer
You said i could call you when i wanted but that you wouldn’t call me. you have to decide where and when, you said. if you leave it up to me i’ll want to see you every day. At least you were honest, which is more than i can say for me.
— Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her
Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?
— Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates
Questions are only offensive to those who have something to hide
— Gary   Hopkins
Do you really think all angels are sweet and gentle? You must have forgot that the front lines of the War in Heaven were littered with bold women that had something to say.
— Shannon L. Alder
Walking away from bad situations and negative people sets a healthier tone for the rest of your life. It also gives those who do not know any better the opportunity to self-correct.
— Gary   Hopkins
...he'll come back. We all come back, kate. These private little revolutions always die. The compromise is always made. In a peculiar way. Frank is right-- every man does have a star. The star of one's honesty. And you spend your life groping for it, but once it's out it never lights again. I don't think he went very far. He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out.
— Arthur Miller, All My Sons
Put a thief among honest men and they will eventually relieve him of his watch.
— Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Being dishonest to himself is the biggest crime any human can make
— Loknath
I don't want to make people mad. I just... well, how can people get better if you don't tell them what you honestly think?
— Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia
What are you saying?”“I want to try.”He wanted clarification on that. “You want to try what?”There it was, that deep flush. “You know.”Yes, he knew, but he wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily. She was going to be his. For a brief time, she would belong to him and he would have everything he wanted, and he wanted her to start talking dirty. Yes. He wanted to teach her, to train her to accept pleasure so she would expect it. “No, I don’t know. You’ll have to be plain.”Avery blushed a little. “I want to be intimate with you.”So sweet. So polite. So not happening. “That sounds like you want me to get into my pajamas and exchange secrets with you. I’m not your girlfriend, Avery. Tell me what you want. That’s lesson number one. Communication and honesty are the keys to the relationship I want. I need to hear you say plainly what you want.”She hesitated, but only for a moment. He wasn’t surprised. Deep her to start talking dirty. Yes. He wanted to teach her, to train her to accept pleasure so she would expect it. “No, I don’t know. You’ll have to be plain.”Avery blushed a little. “I want to be intimate with you.”So sweet. So polite. So not happening. “That sounds like you want me to get into my pajamas and exchange secrets with you. I’m not your girlfriend, Avery. Tell me what you want. That’s lesson number one. Communication and honesty are the keys to the relationship I want. I need to hear you say plainly what you want.”She hesitated, but only for a moment. He wasn’t surprised. Deep in her heart, she was a brave girl. She’d faced so much and still was open with her heart. Damn, but he didn’t understand that. “I would like for us to sleep together.”“I’m not very sleepy.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with anything.She groaned a little in obvious frustration. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”“Yes. I do. So say what you want.”“I want to have sex.”“So clinical. I’ll have to think about that.”“I want to make love.”“Sweet, but not what I’m looking for.”Her face crinkled into the cutest pout. “Damn it, Lee. I want to fuck.”Just like that he was primed and ready. She’d said fuck with such a sweet little heat, her eyebrows forming a V over her face as though the entire incident had offended her polite sensibilities. She would learn there wasn’t room for politeness between them.He growled just a little. “I want to fuck, too, baby. I want to fuck all night long.
— Lexi Blake, A Dom is Forever
I mean, you want the truth as you wanna hear it? I can't do that. You couldn't afford me.
— Keith Moon
I pity you Juliet. You don't know what love is. You think it's Valentine's Day, and weekends in Italy. You think it's drinking champagne in some expensive restaurant and being bought stupid bloody underwear. But that's just the trimmings. The decoration. They're just gestures. Without trust, and respect, and kindness, they don't mean shit. I thought love was about caring about someone day in and day out, about being there when it's rucking amazing and still wanting to be there when it feels like crap, I thought it was about forever.
— Alexandra Potter, Calling Romeo
Honesty must sometimes be taken in small measure, like a bitter medicine.
— Jan Cox Speas
If you are not yourself people will look right through you and see the pale shadow of someone else
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
JAY: Why is a story more upfront than life?LENORE: It just seems more honest, somehow.JAY: Honest meaning closer to the truth?LENORE: I smell trap.JAY: I smell breakthrough. The truth is that there's no difference between a life and a story? But a life pretends to be something more? But it really isn't more?LENORE: I would kill for a shower.
— David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System
Be careful of fake faces, the most honest the most evil.
— M.F. Moonzajer
The day my mother gave us the keys, she also made me and Greta sign a form so that the bank knew our signatures. To get in we had to show our key and sign something so they would know it was really us. I was worried that my signature wouldn't look the same. I wasn't sure when that thing would happen that made it so you always signed your name exactly the same, but it hadn't happened to me yet. So far I'd only had to sign something three times. Once for a code of conduct for the eighth grade field trip to Philadelphia, once for a pact I made with Beans and Frances Wykoski in fifth grade that we'd never have boyfriends until high school. (Of the three of us, I'm the only one who kept that pact.)
— Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home
Honesty is not just keeping your ass away from people but also clean.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Honesty has become the second best policy with your spouse…discretions apply elsewhere
— Amit Abraham
HE who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
— George Berkeley
Integrity is the sentry for the conscious soul.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
Between video games and texting, how do our youth find the time to know everything?
— L.M. Fields
If you don’t find the right set of eyes to see through your bull, you will always be surrounded by friends that will tell you white lies because they like your company and don’t want to ruin the evening.
— Shannon L. Alder
And trust dies from ifs and buts
— Aidan Chambers, Dying to Know You
I don't make people comfortable but that's what couches are for.
— Donna Lynn Hope
The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented.
— J.G. Ballard, J.G. Ballard Conversations
I seem at once cursed to say precisely what I'm thinking to him and unable to tell what he thinks about it.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races
What will you tell him?""The truth."Fortismer thinks about that."Yes," he says at last. "Probably the best thing. Bloody deceptive, honesty.
— Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World
It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, because anyone who knows you knows what a great guy you are on the inside. You're honest and true.
— Jon Steele, The Watchers
It’s not the people in your life that tell you what you want to hear, it's the people in your life that tell you the truth that count.
— Derek Preston
But as to your writing me that I don’t love you very much, I don’t know whether you’re saying this in earnest or whether I should realise that you’re joking with me. Still, what you say disturbs me. You are measuring a very healthy expression of a wife’s loyalty by the standard of the insincere flattery of well-worn phrases. But I shall love you, my husband. What does it mean to you that you reassure me with those trivial little compliments? Do you want me to believe that you expect me to comb my hair in a stylish fashion for your homecoming? Or to feign adoring looks with a painted face? Let women without means, who worry and have no confidence in their virtue, flutter their eyelashes and play games to gain favour with their husbands. This is the adulation of a fox and the birdlime of deceitful bird hunting. I don’t want to have to buy you at such a price. I’m not a person who lays more stock in words than duty. I am truly your Laura, whose soul is the same one you in turn had hoped for.
— Laura Cereta
What you do is so loud, I can't hear what you say."Anonymous
— Mike Addington, The Home Place
Orange Juice? Sure. Toast? Sure. One last time on the couch? Sure. Phone number? Sure. See you again? Oooh, absolutely. That was the lie I told. Probably not, that was the truth, that was that which went unspoken.
— T. Scott McLeod, All That Is Unspoken
The easiest way to be inscrutable is to be completely straightforward and honest. Then no one will be able to figure out what you’re up to.
— George Hammond
Everybody hates lie but nobody wants to hear the truth.
— Anurag Bhatt
She said that in writing anything, you must be perfectly honest.
— Lesley Choyce, The Book of Michael
Today, with the way things are in all circles, in soccer, in society, in politics, where it seems anything goes, a gesture of honesty goes down well.
— Iván Fernández Anaya
He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
...Helen sipped peppermint schnapps and considered the world made of her design. My religion is keeping peace, she thought. It hadn't begun that way, was nothing she'd planned, but now she saw that's how it was. I just ran a grocery, she thought. I don't want this. I ain't the one to make the world right.
— Alan Heathcock, Volt
Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.
— A.W. Tozer
Love is the great test of the human. The human is tested by our ability to withstand love. Love is so difficult, it is so challenging, it demands of us that we wreck it with ourselves. It demands of us an honesty that few of us could sustain.
— Junot Díaz
...when someone is honest and vulnerable, they wring my heart - I want to hug them for being real...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Honest. It's almost always best to go with honest. It means you never have to worry about getting your story straight.
— Jim Butcher, Cold Days
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.
— George Saunders
Honesty is a heart that betrays itself for a dream, a moment, a kiss.
— Shannon L. Alder
We're constantly getting these messages to mind our own business and look the other way if we want to be well liked, to not tell the truth or speak our mind or say anything too intense. Well, I'm telling you here that this approach not only makes you party to other people's crimes against themselves but is a prescription for mediocrity and delusion
— Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You
I'm not going to force you into anything you don't want. But I'm also not going to take a vow of chastity and pine away for you, or whatever the hell it is that men do in romance novels these days. I have needs. I'd rather satisfy them with you, but if you don't want me I suppose I'll just have to find someone else. Might take me a while, but I'll make do. I always have before.
— Nenia Campbell, Armed and Dangerous
Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Often people that tell others they are "extremely polite" when the situation calls for tact and bluntness are not actually polite people. Instead, they hide behind the word “polite” because they have low self esteem or hidden agendas. Sadly, they impolitely confuse the hell out of everyone, send mixed signals, which then makes people question their sanity and motives.
— Shannon L. Alder
Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.
— Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography
He smiles an honest smile for the first time, and the difference is hard to describe but easy to recognize.
— Brenna Yovanoff, The Space Between
Work hard, do your best, live the truth, trust yourself, have some fun...and you'll have no regrets.
— Byrd Baggett
You can’t be another person’s honesty, child, but you can be your own.
— Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
Why would you ever premedicate honesty? To hesitate is to overthink how you feel. A blurted out answer is usually the most genuine.
— Shannon L. Alder
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.
— David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
The best of all lost arts is honesty
— Mark Twain
I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure.....he reads me so well. He's known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing disturbs him...Few can lie to me... I don't know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That's my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion.
— Karen Marie Moning, Iced
Teach honesty by all means - you do know what it is, don't you?
— Idries Shah, Reflections
You're a poster boy for sincerity. You have all the guile of a lamb.
— Dean Koontz, Forever Odd
I lie without a mask, thus I am an honest man.
— Lionel Suggs
Politics is the art of saying well that which may or may not be true.
— Orrin Woodward
A man who will steal for me will steal from me." Theodore Roosevelt, dismissing on the spot one of his best cowhands who was about to claim for his boss an unmarked animal.
— David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt
Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread.So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head ... but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz ... not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.
— Hunter S. Thompson
I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- frankness on the part of our politicians, our friends, our loves, ourselves. No more liars in public places. (And the bed and the bar are, in their way, as public as the floor of Congress.)
— Tim O'Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
A liar only uses the truth when they want their lies to sound truthful.
— Al David
It was the first honest emotional connection I'd had in a while. So I immediately panicked and had to leave.
— Candace Bushnell
One lie can tarnish a thousand truths.
— Al David
You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. So you just walk home.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone’s thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a “case” with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.
— George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: 1937-1939