William Hazlitt Quotes

I don't want to lie. I dislike dishonesty. And I work in Hollywood, a town and a business that relies on a lot of falsehoods with people hiding behind different facades. I don't want to be a part of that.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

I abhor hypocrisy.

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

The truthful man is usually a liar.

Put away from you a dissembling mouth.

It might be said that the pose of absolute honesty is the most dishonest one of all.

We're against hypocrisy, lies, bigotry, show business, insincerity, phonies, and fakers.

I have little time for sincerity.

You become uneasy with people in direct proportion to how many lies you have to keep track of in their presence.

But here's the thing about being honest: All the liars HATE you for it, and most of the people in the world are liars. They lie to their bosses, they lie to their families, they lie to themselves, they lie so much they don't even know they're lying anymore. If you have the courage to be honest even a little bit all those people will hate you for it, because their lie is reflected in your honesty. Oscar Wilde wasn't kidding when he said, "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity.

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers.

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

Man is ice to truth and fire to falsehood.

I'm not always sincere. One can't be in this world, you know.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

Have you weaned yourself of your off-putting proclivity for not telling the truth/

Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.