Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another.--EPH. iv. 25.
In conversation be sincere; Keep conscience as the noontide clear; Think how All-seeing God thy ways And all thy secret thoughts surveys.
THOMAS KEN.
The essence of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded; so that no form of blinded conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead of utterance.
J. RUSKIN.
He that is habituated to deceptions and artificialities in trifles, will try in vain to be true in matters of importance; for truth is a thing of habit rather than of will. You cannot in any given case by any sudden and single effort will to be true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity.
F. W. ROBERTSON.