Lynn Coady Quotes

I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, 'Man, you were so honest - can't you have some fun? Can't you do some really down and dirty lying?' But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I'll be punished.

If you tell a lie to make a person better, then that is not a sin.

We usually know what we can do, but temptation shows us who we are.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

I think my heart is quite selfish. If I followed my heart, I would not be a good person. But I have moral principles. I have to sit down and reflect.

Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses during the course of a day to change the current of our lives.

The tension between 'yes' and 'no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot', makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own confusions.

Prudent people are very happy; 'tis an exceeding fine thing, that's certain, but I was born without it, and shall retain to my day of Death the Humour of saying what I think.

Just because I don't do bad things doesn't mean I don't have bad thoughts.

No mortal man has ever served at the same time his passions and his best interests.

There are times when lying is the most sacred of duties.

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; But when the truth entails tremendous ruin, To speak dishonorably is pardonable.

One of my worst fears is being a self-indulgent person.

What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.

Sometimes I wish I was less of a maniac; sometimes I wish I was more.

I have a mean streak and I am capable of cruelty. This does not mean that I am necessarily mean and cruel; instead, it means that I have to be vigilant about my capacity for cruelty and the mean bone in my body.

Sometimes it’s more noble to tell a small lie than to deliver a painful truth.

I don’t like to lie – so there’d better be a good reason why I’m doing it.

Honesty is always good, except when it's better to lie.

There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good?

A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.

What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good.

Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we've strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that's like, and we resist it - so as not to feel like we're bad people.

The ego is not master in its own house.