Edgar Guest Quotes

Never, ever cheat, especially yourself, even if you are absolutely, positively sure that you can get away with it.

Honesty is a rare commodity in a palace, and that is why so many fairy-tale marriages end up on the rocks.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

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

A small lie, if it actually is a lie, condemns a man as much as a big and black falsehood. If a man will deliberately cheat to the amount of a single cent, give him opportunity and he would cheat to any amount.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.

A resolution never to deceive exposes a man to be often deceived.

A man will pass better through the world with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected.

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.

It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbors should be true to the public.

I don't cheat.

He who purposely cheats his friend would cheat his God.

The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception.

There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.

Do the devils lie? No; for then even hell could not subsist.

On the whole, I should say that the person who likes to lie should never, in any circumstances, be allowed to. Leave the lying to the people who hate it. You will not find them indulging often.

Dishonesty is a forsaking of permanent for temporary advantages.

I'm a very firm believer that a liar is a cheat and a thief and a crook. I don't like liars. I never lie. I always told my own child, "If you murder somebody, tell me. I'll help you hide the body. But don't you lie to me.

Dishonesty is like a boomerang. About the time you think all is well, it hits you in the back of the head.

We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.

Think nothing profitable to you which compels you to break a promise, to lose your self respect, to hate any person, to curse, to act the hypocrite.

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love

I don’t like to lie – so there’d better be a good reason why I’m doing it.

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.