dots-menu
×

C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Candor

Candor is the brightest gem of criticism.

Disraeli.

Plain dealing is easiest and best.

Jane Porter.

In simple and pure soul I come to you.

Shakespeare.

I can promise to be candid, but I cannot promise to be impartial.

Goethe.

He speaks home; you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.

Shakespeare.

Candor may be considered as a compound of justice and the love of truth.

Abercrombie.

Candor is the seal of a noble mind, the ornament and pride of man, the sweetest charm of woman, the scorn of rascals and the rarest virtue of sociability.

Bentzel-Sternau.

  • ’Tis great—’tis manly to disdain disguise,
  • It shows our spirit, or it proves our strength.
  • Young.

  • Make my breast
  • Transparent as pure crystal, that the world,
  • Jealous of me, may see the foulest thought
  • My heart does hold.
  • Buckingham.

    There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.

    Pope.

    He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.

    Lavater.

  • Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe;
  • Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;
  • But of all plagues, good heaven, thy wrath can send,
  • Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend.
  • George Canning.

  • The brave do never shun the light;
  • Just are their thoughts, and open are their tempers;
  • Truly without disguise they love and hate;
  • Still are they found in the fair face of day,
  • And heav’n and men are judges of their actions.
  • Rowe.

    A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.

    Pope.

  • You talk to me in parables.
  • You may have known that I’m no wordy man,
  • Fine speeches are the instruments of knaves
  • Or fools that use them, when they want good sense;
  • But honesty
  • Needs no disguise nor ornament: be plain.
  • Otway.

    Some frauds succeed from the apparent candor, the open confidence, and the full blaze of ingenuousness that is thrown around them. The slightest mystery would excite suspicion and ruin all. Such stratagems may be compared to the stars; they are discoverable by darkness and hidden only by light.

    Colton.

    If anything in my conversation has merited your regard, I think it must be the openness and freedom with which I commonly express my sentiments. You are too wise a man not to know that such freedom is not without its use.

    Burke.