Character and Conduct Part 30

Accuracy

JULY 4

"We always weaken what we exaggerate."

LA HARPE.

"It is no great advantage to have a lively wit if exactness be wanting.

The perfection of a clock does not consist in its going fast, but in its keeping good time."

VAUVENARGUES.

"After much vehement talk about 'the veracities,' will come utterly unveracious accounts of things and people--accounts made unveracious by the use of emphatic words where ordinary words alone are warranted: pictures of which the outlines are correct, but the lights and shades and colours are doubly and trebly as strong as they should be."

HERBERT SPENCER.

Truthfulness

JULY 5

"It takes two to speak truth--one to speak and another to hear."

Th.o.r.eAU.

"Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth.

It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration, such as is often found in mutual love. _Yea_ and _nay_ mean nothing; the meaning must have been related in the question. Many words are often necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour's talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought."

_Virginibus Puerisque_, R. L. STEVENSON.

Truthfulness

JULY 6

"In very truth lying is a hateful and accursed vice. It is words alone that distinguish us from the brute creation, and knit us to each other.

If we did but feel proper horror of it, and the fearful consequences that spring from such a habit, we would pursue it with fire and sword, and with far more justice than other crimes. I observe that parents take pleasure in correcting their children for slight faults, which make little impression on the character, and are of no real consequence.

Whereas lying, in my opinion, and obstinacy, though in a less degree, are vices, the rise and progress of which ought to be particularly watched and counteracted; these grow with their growth, and when once the tongue has got a _wrong set, it is impossible to put it straight again_. Whence we see men, otherwise of honourable natures, slaves to this vice. If falsehood had, like truth, only one face, we should be on more equal terms with it, for we should consider the contrary to what the liar said as certain; but the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms, and is a field of boundless extent."

MONTAIGNE.

"Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society."

EMERSON.

Truthfulness

JULY 7

"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 G.o.d; 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."

AMMAN.

Gossip

JULY 8

"Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait for the death of the creature it devours."

_Diana of the Crossways_, G. MEREDITH.

"Give to a gracious message A host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell Themselves when they be felt."

SHAKESPEARE.

"Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken."

GEORGE ELIOT.

"If there is much art in speaking, there is no less in keeping silence.

There is an eloquent silence; it serves to praise and to condemn: there is a scornful silence: and there is a respectful silence."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

Back-biting

JULY 9

"Hear as little as you possibly can to the prejudice of others; believe nothing of the kind unless you are forced to believe it; never circulate, nor approve of those who circulate, loose reports; moderate as far as you can the censure of others; always believe that if the other side were heard a very different account would be given of the matter."

_Everyday Christian Life_, Dean FARRAR.

"We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."

EMERSON.