Character and Conduct – 7 July – Truthfulness

THE cruellest lies are often told in silence.   A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.   And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?   And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed through a lie.   Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment;  and part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny.   A fact may be an exception;  but the feeling is the law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie.   The whole tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement;  the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate conversation.   You never speak to God;  you address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers:  and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression;  truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity.

Virginibus Puerisque, R. L. STEVENSON

TRUTH is violated by falsehood, and it may be equally outraged by silence.

AMMIAN

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These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing them here readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.