Sincerity Quotes

Can there be greater foolishness than the respect you pay to people collectively when you despise them individually?

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Sincerity gives wings to power.

Source Unknown

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

George Eliot

One reason why the Enemy found this so east was that, without knowing it, I was already desperately anxious to get rid of my religion; and that for a reason worth recording. By a sheer mistake - and I still believe it to have been an honest mistake - in spiritual technique I had rendered my private practice of that religion a quiet intolerable burden. It came about in this way. Like everyone else I had been told as a child that one must not only say one's prayers but think abut what one was saying. Accordingly, when I came to a serious belief, I tried to put this into practice. At first it seemed plain sailing. But soon the false conscience (St. Paul's 'Law', Herbert's 'prattler') came into play. One had no sooner reached 'Amen' than it whispered, 'Yes. But are you sure you were really thinking about what you said?'; then, more subtly, 'Were you, for example, thinking about it as well as you did last night?' The answer, for reasons I did not then understand, was nearly always No. 'Very well,' said the voice, 'hadn't you, then, better try it over again?' And one obeyed; but of course with no assurance that the second attempt would be any better...I set myself a standard. No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a 'realization,' by which I meant a certain vivedness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will power a phenomenon which will power could never produce, which was so ill-defined that I could never say with absolute confidence whether it had occurred, and which, even when it did occur, was of very mediocre spiritual value.

C.S. Lewis

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.

C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon

Frank and explicit -- that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.

Benjamin Disraeli

Candor is the brightest gem of criticism.

Benjamin Disraeli

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Benjamin Disraeli

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

Henry David Thoreau

We are very apt to measure ourselves by our aspiration instead of our performance. But in truth the conduct of our lives is the only proof of the sincerity of our hearts.

Source Unknown

It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudosimplicities of brutal directness.

Marshall McLuhan

Sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile.

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

It doesn't matter what you believe just so long as you're sincere.

Charles Monroe Schulz

The way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe just so you're sincere.

Charles Monroe Schulz

Examine what is said, not him who speaks.

Arabic Proverb

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

Source Unknown

The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere!

Thomas Carlyle

The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man.

Thomas Carlyle

Sincerity: if you can fake it, you've got it made.

Daniel Schorr