Dishonesty

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Dishonesty is the tendency towards untruth.

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• O, what a tangled web we weave,
  When first we practice to deceive!
  • Sir Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto VI, st. 17

But when we've practised quite a while
How vastly we improve our style!

• J. R. Pope, A Word of Encouragement. Collected in The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse, 1978.

• When we risk no contradiction,
  It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction.
  • John Gay, Fables (1727), "The Elephant and the Bookseller"

• Don’t lie, but don’t tell the whole truth.
  • Baltasar Gracián, Maxim 181, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

• You know where you are with a complete liar, but when a chap mixes some truth with his yarns, you can't trust a word he says.
  • Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth (1944), p. 162. ISBN 0-06-092021-1

• Just because conduct is distasteful does not mean it automatically deserves legal redress. Just ask the citizens of Sterling, Iowa, who make their town a laughingstock in the media several years ago with their quixotic effort to criminalize lying.
  • Jacob M. Appel, bioethicist and liberal columnist, Hate the Husband? Sue the Mistress!, The Huffington Post, October 6, 2009.

[edit] Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• Wisdom and truth, the offspring of the sky, are immortal; while cunning and deception, the meteors of the earth, after glittering for a moment, must pass away.
  • Robert Hall, p. 241.

• Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.
  • Samuel Johnson, p. 242.

• Lie not, neither to thyself nor men nor God. Let mouth and heart be one — beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.
  • George Herbert, p. 242.

• I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters of importance.
  • William Paley, p. 242.

• Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame.
  • Hugh Blair, p. 242.

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