Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!
Honesty Quotes
By count, Shakespeare is far ahead of the next writers, Solomon, George Herbert and Mark Twain. The sourced lines lean toward sincerity, not honesty as such, and they are not what a poster would use. Wilde, in The Critic as Artist (1891), says a little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. Martin Luther King Jr., in Strength to Love (1963), says nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Shaw’s remark that there is no love sincerer than the love of food appears here and under Food.
The only flagged entry is “It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver,” credited to Machiavelli and marked misattributed.
Most quoted on honesty:
Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies;
And sure he will; for wisdom never lies.
An animal may be cunning and ferocious enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood.
Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.
A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble.
He is one that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience.
As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths.