An honest man is in Hell when he is in debt.
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.
Men are as we have always known them, neither better nor worse from the hearts of rogues there springs a latent honesty, from the depths of honest men there emerges a brutish appetite - a thirst for extermination, a desire for blood.
An honest man is strange when he is among dishonest men, but it is a good kind of strangeness.
Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.
I think most corporate executives are good honorable honest men and women who do good work.
A thief, though rich, will continue to steal, but an honest man, though poor, will ever seek to pay his debts.
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
All my fears and cares are of this world; if there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it.
However roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man.
Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.... Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed.
The life of an honest man must be a perpetual infidelity.
To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has never had a chance, poor devil, you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.
The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors
If anybody ever dares to compare Bob Dole to Clinton, then they're comparing a criminal to an honest man.
No flattery, boy! an honest man cannot live by it; it is a little, sneaking art, which knaves use to cajole and soften fools withal.
I think we Americans tend to put too high a price on unanimity, as if there were something dangerous and illegitimate about honest differences of opinion honestly expressed by honest men.
There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
A few honest men are better than numbers.
The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke.
The insincerity of man-all men are liars, partial or hiders of facts, half tellers of truths, shirks, moral sneaks. When a merely honest man appears he is a comet-his fame is eternal-needs no genius, no talent-mere honesty
A man's a man for a' that. . . . . A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might, Guid faith he mauna fa' that! . . . Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree and a' that. For a' that, and a' that, It's comin' yet, for a' that, When man to man, the world o'er, Shall brithers be for a' that.
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