Swami Sivananda Quotes

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

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

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

The truthful man is usually a liar.

It's best not to appear to believe what you say but to believe what you say.

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."

I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.

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.

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

They say that in Hollywood one can't be honest, but I think honesty counts in Hollywood just as much as it does anywhere else. I think it's just too much trouble to be dishonest and keep up with yourself.

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.

As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style.

Lying has become so much the accepted norm that people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the 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.

I think that if one's role doesn't correspond to what one says, if one's life doesn't correspond to what one preaches, if one is not true to one's people, someone else will come as a substitute.

I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

The greatest truth is honesty, and the greatest falsehood is dishonesty.

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.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

Lying about anything is the cruelest thing in the world you could ever do. Be who you are. Don't try to be someone you're not. It never works.

If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.