Joseph Joubert Quotes

You cannot play naive if you're not.

I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

The man grinned back at me with that perfect sincerity we fear and call simple-minded.

If people could be as honest as animals, what a different world it would be.

I don't think I'm complicated at all. I'm not political, and I'm not trying to be diplomatic. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and I don't say bad things about people. There is no agenda. There's no trying to fool somebody.

The truth just happens - lies take time to make.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Be honest with yourself and lie to everyone else.

Keep it simple. Tell the truth. People can smell the truth.

Put away from you a dissembling mouth.

Kids are the most genuine thing to me: everything they say and do, they mean it.

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

It's so much easier to be truthful. Maybe I'm just too lazy to lie.

There's freedom in being rigorously honest. I lied all my life.

All I know is real life. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to pretend.

I learned at a very young age how to be simplistic and sincere.