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Honesty is the best policy--when there is money in it.
- Business speech, 3/30/1901
There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a
superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
- Following the Equator
Barring the natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked
honest enough.
- "A Mysterious Visit," 1875
Honesty: the best of all the lost arts.
- Notebook, 1902
Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think
it is.
- Letter to Joe Twichell, 3/14/1905
All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could never use money
I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.
- Speech, 12/22/1907
I would much prefer to suffer from the clean incision of an honest lancet than
from a sweetened poison.
- Letter to Olivia, 12/29/1869
Every man is wholly honest to himself and to God, but not to any one else.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
No man is straitly honest to any but himself and God.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until
we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought
to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
An honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.
- A Tramp Abroad
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--Luther,
Christ, etc.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
....honest men are few when it comes to themselves.
- quoted in My Mark Twain, William Dean Howells
As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able
to conceal ourselves all through the day.
- speech 1902, Mark Twain Speaks for Himself
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