Experience has often shown me that – amusingly so, at the expense of those kinds of men whose profession is never to utter a word without trimming it to suit whatever business is being negotiated at the time, thereby pleasing the great ones with whom they are speaking. Such men are prepared to make their honour and conscience slaves to present circumstances: but circumstances are liable to frequent change, and their work must vary with them. They are obliged to call the very same thing first grey then yellow, saying one thing to this man, quite another to another. If the persons, who receive such contrary advice happens to compare their haul, what becomes of their fine diplomacy? ….
Lying is an accursed vice. It is only our words which bind us together
and make us human. If we realized the
horror and weight of lying we would see that it is more worthy of the stake
than other crimes. I find that people
normally waste time quite inappropriately punishing children for innocent
misdemeanors, tormenting them for thoughtless actions which lead nowhere and
leave no trace. It seems to me that the
only faults which we should vigorously attack as soon as they arise and start
to develop are lying and, a little below that, stubbornness. These faults grow up with the children. Once let the tongue acquire the habit of
lying and it is astonishing how impossible it is to make it give up. That is why some otherwise decent men are abject
slaves to it. One of my tailors is a
good enough fellow, but I have never heard him speak the truth, not even when
it would help him if he did so. …
I cannot guarantee that I could bring myself to
tell a solemn, bare-faced lie, even to ward off some obvious and immense
danger. One of the old Church Fathers
says that even a dog we do know is better company than a man whose language we
do not know. … How much less companionable than silence is the language of
falsehood. [1]
Montaigne, Essays (1582)
[1] Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, tr. M.A. Screech (Toronto: Penguin,
2003), pp. 34, 35.
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