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

Impudence

What! canst thou say all this and never blush?

Shakespeare.

A true and genuine impudence is ever the effect of ignorance, without the least sense of it.

Steele.

There is no better provision for life than impudence and a brazen face.

Menander.

What was said by the Latin poet of labor—that it conquers all things—is much more true when applied to impudence.

Fielding.

He that has but impudence,
To all things has a fair pretence;
And put among his wants but shame,
To all the world may lay his claim.

Butler.

With that dull, rooted, callous impudence,
Which, dead to shame, and ev’ry nicer sense,
Ne’er blushed, unless, in spreading vice’s snares,
She blunder’d on some virtue unawares.

Churchill.

The way to avoid the imputation of impudence is not to be ashamed of what we do, but never to do what we aught to be ashamed of.

Tully.

Impudence is no virtue; yet able to beggar them all; being for the most part in good plight, when the rest starve, and capable of carrying her followers up to the highest preferments; as useful in a court as armor in a camp.

Sir Thomas Osborne.

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