Character, Integrity, Honor

If you have integrity, nothing else matters.  If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. 

-Alan Simpson

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

-Thomas Paine 

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. 

-French Proverb

Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort. 

-Bert Murray

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

-Will Rogers

What you want to be eventually, that you must be every day; and by and by the quality of your deeds will get down into your soul.

-Frank Crane

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.

-Jean Paul Richter

Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

-Elbert Hubbard

Every man has three characters: that which he shows, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

-Alphonse Karr

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

-Albert Einstein

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

-Author Unknown

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

-Lao-Tzu

If there is beauty in character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

-Chinese Proverb 

It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong. 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare. 

-William Arnot

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.

-Will Durant

What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.  

-Bodie Thorne

Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.

-Arnold H. Glasow

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

-Abraham Lincoln

The time is always right to do what is right. 

-Martin Luther King Jr.

You can stand tall without standing on someone.  You can be a victor without having victims.

-Harriet Woods

Real integrity  is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.

-Oprah Winfrey

 Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right, decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

-George Eliot

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

-John Steinbeck

Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.

-George Bernard Shaw

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

-Leo Tolstoy

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

-Welsh Proverb

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.

-Adlai Stevenson

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.

-William Safire

If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.

-John Lubbock

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. 

-James D. Miles

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. 

-William Shakespeare

You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.

-Rwandan Proverb

Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right.

-Mario Cuomo

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

-Confucius

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. 

-David Star Jordan 

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

-German Proverb 

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be.

-Socrates 

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Honesty, Trust and Truth

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

-Mark Twain

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

-Thomas Carlyle

A half truth is a whole lie.

-Yiddish Proverb

When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.

-Bill Copeland

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.

-Tad Williams

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.

-Thomas Jefferson

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

-Winston Churchill

People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.

-Richard Needham

There is always a way to be honest without being brutal.

-Arthur Dobrin

Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie.

-Robert Brault

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

-Mark Twain

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. 

-Booker T. Washington

Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. 

-Lemony Snicket

When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. 

-William Blake

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

-Leo Tolstoy

 We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. 

 -Denis Diderot

Look a man in the eye and say what you really think, don't just smile at him and say what you're supposed to think.

-author unknown

Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.

-William Shakespeare

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

-Henry David Thoreau

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

-John Ruskin

 We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

-George Bernard Shaw

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.

-Emile Zola

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

-Albert Einstein

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Children, Childhood, Parents, Family

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.

-Stacia Tauscher

While we try to teach our children all about life, Our children teach us what life is all about. 

-Angela Schwindt

A child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to.

-Robert Brault

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

-Phyllis Diller

There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.

-Frank A. Clark

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

-Frederick Douglass

 There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.

-Walt Streightiff

The best preparation for being a happy and useful man or woman is to live fully as a child.

-The Plowden  Report 

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots; the other is wings.

-Hodding Carter

When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.

-Dr. Joyce Brothers

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

-Jane Howard

 If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct.

-Letty Cottin Pogrebin

 The advantage of growing up with siblings is that you become very good at fractions.

-Robert Brault

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

-Elizabeth Stone

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

-Jesse Jackson

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.

-Robert Fulghum

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.

-Robert A. Heinlein

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

-Roger Lewin

 Sing out loud in the car even, or especially, if it embarrasses your children.

-Marilyn Penland

You will always be your child's favorite toy.

-Vicki Lansky

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

-P.D. James

If your children spend most of their time in other people's houses, you're lucky; if they all congregate at your house, you're blessed.

-Mignon McLaughlin

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.

-Haim Ginott

Now the thing about having a baby - and I can't be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it.

-Jean Kerr

Kids spell love T-I-M-E.

-John Crudele

The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.

-Sloan Wilson

If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't have any.

-Clarence Day

I am not young enough to know everything.

-Oscar Wilde

A child enters your home and for the next twenty years makes so much noise you can hardly stand it. The child departs, leaving the house so silent you think you are going mad.

-John Andrew Holmes

A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it.

-Frank A. Clark

It is one thing to show your child the way, and a harder thing to then stand out of it.

-Robert Brault

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. but when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much he had learned in seven years.

-Mark Twain

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.

-Yoda

The more we shelter children from every disappointment, the more devastating future disappointments will be.

-Fred G. Gosman

Self-esteem is the real magic wand that can form a child’s future. A child’s self-esteem affects every area of her existence, from friends she chooses, to how well she does academically in school, to what kind of job she gets, to even the person she chooses to marry.

-Stephanie Martson

We know that the outcasts and misfits are the children most likely to become violent, so it only follows that we must pull them into the arms of love and/or acceptance, and find a place where they fit. If our system doesn't have a place where a child fits, there's something wrong with the system, not the child.

-William G. Defoore

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

-Barbara Walters

If a child is given love, he becomes loving ... If he's helped when he needs help, he becomes helpful. And if he has been truly valued at home ... he grows up secure enough to look beyond himself to the welfare of others.

-Dr. Joyce Brothers

Children, no matter how gifted, can't see far into the future, you know. To them, a year is almost a lifetime, and telling them that things will be fine when they grow up does no good at all.

-John Saul 

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

-Franklin P. Jones

Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.

-Harold Hulbert

If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.

-Pearl S. Buck

The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.

-Jim Trelease

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

-Margaret Atwood

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