Frankness Quotes

“In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

“Being the soothsayer of the tribe is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I'm not a good man. Perhaps morally I'm younger even than you are. Can you understand that?”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“He makes a gesture, designed to impersonate frankness.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“In the hands of a cruel person, honesty can be a lethal weapon.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I'm going to be frank, Max..."
"Of course. All cards on the table." But he gave me a poker smile.”
― Alfred Alcorn, The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man

“A spirit of candor and frankness, when wholly unaccompanied with coarseness, he
admired in others, but he could not acquire it himself.”
― Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“The barber's assistant asks if I am a Swede. An American? Not that either. A Russian? Well, then, what are you? I love to answer such nationalistically tinted questions with a steely silence, and to leave people who ask me about my patriotic feelings in the dark. Or I tell lies and say that I'm Danish. Some kinds of frankness are only hurtful and boring.”
― Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten

“...бывают в жизни человека редкие моменты, когда возникает в душе жажда откровенности и речей, хотя после часто и стыдно бывает, особенно когда догадаетесь, что вас слушали без сочувствия. "Эк меня разносило! - думается увлёкшемуся человеку. - Опять, опять не утерпел!.. Зачем было высказываться до таких подробностей? К чему эти вопли, которые не нормальное же моё состояние? Разве первый раз ощутил я прилив этих чувств? Надобно смотреть на других: все спокойны, не увидишь одушевлённого лица - все, как доска, без выражения, не услышишь сильно поднятой ноты в голосе. Мало ли что вчера было больно, нестерпимо, кричать хотелось, а сегодня больно от неумеренного крику". Но напрасно человек заклинает горячее слово и откровенную беседу; когда созреет вопль душевный, радостный или печальный, опять явится откровенность, потому что это закон физилогический и психический, это закон природы. Есть какой-то хмель в откровенности; она одуряет и увлекает; и как рад человек, когда найдёт другого человека и когда он, оглядевшись, уверится, что над его мыслью никто не стоит, запрёт двери - и тут-то польются речи рекой, и тогда именно можно заговориться до охмеления. Поговорить хоть, если нельзя делать; хоть потихоньку, если нельзя вслух. Кто не испытывал этого блаженства речи?..

- Н.Г. Помяловский "Мещанское счастье”
― Н.Г. Помяловский, Повести о любви. Сборник в двух томах. Том первый

“Display politeness and frankness always both in action and conversation. Don’t keep engaging in useless arguments. It scares your dreams away. Talk sensibly.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Shaping the dream

“If we’re honest, what makes something impossible is not our fear. Rather, it is our indifference.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Oh yes, I am frequently driven to an enraged frenzy by the blatantly crass actions of others. But to be painfully honest, that anger is much less driven by the reality of their actions and far more fueled by the realization that everything I am is everything that I hate in them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I was then at the height of my two-facedness: that is, outside I seemed one way, inside I was another; outside false, inside true. And so I made pleasant little noises that showed both modesty and appreciation, but inside I was making a vow to erase from my mind, line by line, every word of that poem.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

“In the guise of frankness many people ruin their world by saying unpleasant things to friends and family. The bad words make them a bad world.”
― Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon

“While it was impossible to be formal and reserved in her company, it was more than impossible to take the faintest vestige of a liberty with her, even in thought. I felt this instinctively, even while I caught the infection of her own bright gaiety of spirits--even while I did my best to answer her in her own frank, lively way.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“The one thing I have insisted on with all of my friends, regardless of class or station in life, is to be able to speak truthfully. If I cannot be open and frank with a friend, or he with me, I drop him.”
― Henry Miller, On turning eighty

“A mirror is fragile but not afraid of showing the truth.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“If you want to confuse somebody tell them the truth, because there’s a really good chance that that’s the one thing they didn’t anticipate.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Once I started telling the truth, it was hard to stop.”
― Martha Wells, Exit Strategy

“The problem with holiness is that once we look into the face of it we are no longer capable of taking that which is odious and filthy and somehow pretending that it’s translucent and clean. In other words, we have to do one of the most revolting things possible; we have to face ourselves.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough, An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus

“Suddenly, with a cynical frankness, he began comparing his feelings for these two girls. ‘The truth is,’ he said to himself, ‘I love them both! I love Gerda because she’s so simple, and because I’ve slept with her all these months ; and I love Christie because she’s so subtle, and because I’ve never slept with her!”
― John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent

“Most people want to be told the truth … most of the time.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Lack of candor, we find upon examination, is not only the cause of many of our greatest problems, but also the impediment to solving most of our problems.”
― J.S. Felts, Ageless Wisdom: A Treasury of Quotes to Motivate & Inspire

“I think your stepmother Cora is a double-faced bitch if ever I knew one. Sorry, Ellie, perhaps I oughtn't to say that.”
― Agatha Christie, Endless Night

“People love talking about themselves. Yet everyone is hiding something. I started unhiding, and it opened up new worlds.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“More people would open up about themselves if the kind in humankind meant humans were kind.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia