As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but, in their stead, / Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, / Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not" (5.3.25-28).
William ShakespeareRead
Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie? I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth; the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. . . . Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores different levels of dishonesty and the power of possibility in truth-telling.
In this quote, Shakespeare categorizes various forms of lies, indicating a spectrum from polite retorts to outright deception. He emphasizes that while one can avoid many types of falsehoods, the most straightforward lie can sometimes be circumvented through the conditional nature of 'If', which introduces nuance and potential for reconciliation. This reflects on the complexity of human communication and the role of honesty in relationships.
Themes
LieTruthCommunicationDeceptionIf
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the importance of honesty in leadership.
More from William Shakespeare
All quotes →Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.
William ShakespeareRead
Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.
William ShakespeareRead
Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear.
William ShakespeareRead
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
William ShakespeareRead
Give it an understanding, but no tongue.
William ShakespeareRead
Similar quotes
The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.
Richard DawkinsRead
Truthfulness under oath is, by now, a matter of our civic religion, our relation to our fellow citizens rather than our relation to a nonhuman power.
Richard RortyRead
Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to some casual circumstance, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
The thing about talking about human rights is that when one bears in mind the sharp end of it, one does not want to worry too much about semantics.
Tom StoppardRead
the more i live, the more i realize what strange creatures human beings are. some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. the human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-man seem actually non-existent. one doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself.
D. H. LawrenceRead
Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.
Don DelilloRead