“However roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man.”
Letter, Philadelphia, to Rachel Smithers (6 July 1794), published in The Autobiography of William Cobbett: The Progress of a Plough-boy to a Seat in Parliament, ch. 5, p. 57 (1933).
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William Cobbett 58
English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist 1763–1835Related quotes
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections
“An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.”
No. 387
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
“An honest man nearly always thinks justly.”
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 277.
“No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.”
Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his Travels (1596)
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 513
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang. Let not a meanness of spirit, unknown to those whom you boast of as your fathers, excite a thought to the dishonor of your mothers I conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that ye act; that, if necessary, ye fight, and even die, for the prosperity of our Jerusalem. Break in sunder, with noble disdain, the bonds with which the Philistines have bound you. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.
“Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.”
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: Religions are for a day. They are the clouds. Humanity is the eternal blue. Religions are the waves of the sea. These waves depend upon the force and direction of the wind -- that is to say, of passion; but Humanity is the great sea. And so our religions change from day to day, and it is a blessed thing that they do. Why? Because we grow, and we are getting a little more civilized every day, -- and any man that is not willing to let another man express his opinion, is not a civilized man, and you know it. Any man that does not give to everybody else the rights he claims for himself, is not an honest man.