A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
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:
Make the Moor thank me, love me and reward me,
For making him egregiously an ass.
Truthful lips will endure forever, but a lying tongue will last for only a moment.
The righteous one hates lies, but the actions of the wicked bring shame and disgrace.
There is a cunning which we in England call the turning of the cat in the pan.
Where the lion's skin falls short it must be eked out with the fox's.
Deceit and treachery skulk with hatred, but an honest spirit flieth with anger.
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artifices as we do our own selves.
And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade.
So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.