Quotes about Honesty

No man of high and generous spirit is ever willing to indulge in flattery; the good may feel affection for others, but will not flatter them.

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.

I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn't raised that way, and I'm not going to raise a child to do that.

I don't think it's healthy to have secrets; they hang over a family for generations.

In honesty you have to admit to a wise man that prayer is not for the wise, not for the prudent, not for the sophisticated. Instead it is for those who recognize that in face of their deepest needs, all their wisdom is quite helpless. It is for those who are willing to persist in doing something that is both childish and crucial.

You use your real voice with those you love, and you cannot be phony with those who know you well.

We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don't like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need.

Lying to God is like sawing the branch you're sitting on. The better you do it, the harder you fall.

The decisive war is the other one - to become fully human, which means to become compassionate, honest, brave. And this is a war against the darkness which no man fights alone.

I would go so far as to say that it may even have caused him to think the more highly of them because their unbelief grew from a far more honest view of the wretchedness of things than the belief of the devout who see only what they choose to see and turn a blind eye on the rest.

I never took it for granted that they believed any of even the most basic affirmations of the Christian faith concerning such matters as God and Jesus, sin and salvation, but always tried to speak to their skepticism and to honor their doubts. I made a point of never urging on them anything I did not believe myself. I was candid about what, like them, I was puzzled by and uncertain of. I tried to be myself. I tried to be honest.

If the truth is worth telling, it is worth making a fool of yourself to tell.