Sincerity

Sincerity is the virtue of anyone who speaks truly about his or her own feelings, thoughts, desires. Sincere expression carries risks to the speaker, since the ordinary screens used in everyday life are opened to the outside world. At the same time, we expect our friends, our lovers, our leaders "to be sincere".

Heaven, when it sent me into the world, did not give me a soul suited to the air of courts. I do not find in myself the virtues necessary to succeed, and make my fortune there. My chief talent is to be frank and sincere. ~ Molière's Alcèste

To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotes

“She seems very sincere,” Asura told Pieter.
“A word with oddly positive connotations,” Peter said, nodding. “In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.”
- Iain Banks, Feersum Endjinn (1994), ISBN 0-553-37459-1, p. 132

“You’re sincere enough.” She laughed shortly. “Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist!”
- Algis Budrys, Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 5

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.
- Albert Camus, The Fall

There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.
- Anton Chekhov, quoted on Goodreads

When we have intelligence resulting from sincerity, this condition is to be ascribed to nature; when we have sincerity resulting from intelligence, this condition is to be ascribed to instruction. But given the sincerity, and there shall be the intelligence; given the intelligence, and there shall be the sincerity.
- Confucius, "The Doctrine of the Mean" (ca. 500 BC)

主忠信。毋友不如己者。過，則勿憚改。
- Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.… If you make a mistake, do not be afraid to correct it.
- Confucius, The Analects, Chapter I

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praise-worthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.
- Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record (1912)

Denial of one's better self seals the lips or pollutes them. Fidelity to conviction opens them and truth blossoms in eloquence.
- Eugene Debs, "The Secret of Efficient Expression" (1911)

You can be sincere and still be stupid.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, quoted on Goodreads

We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting—as indeed he could not help doing—for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship,” Essays: First Series, Complete Works (1883), vol. 2, pp. 194-195

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted on Goodreads

Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.
- Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press (2005)

Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady.
- Yukteswar Giri Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

I think that the decision to be sincere is an artistic one.
- 1982 interview in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer edited by Nancy Topping Bazin and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990)

Frank sincerity is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing to every one, while simulation, on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yet for a man's self, simulation is of the two by far the more useful; sincerity tending rather to the interest of others. But since it cannot be denied that it is not a fine thing to deceive, I would commend him whose conduct is as a rule open and straightforward, and who uses simulation only in matters of the gravest importance and such as very seldom occur; for in this way he will gain a name for honesty and sincerity, and with it the advantages attaching to these qualities. At the same time, when, in any extreme emergency, he resorts to simulation, he will draw all the greater advantage from it, because from his reputation for plain dealing his artifice will blind men more.
- Francesco Guicciardini, Counsels and Reflections, 104

Over the years they had developed a layer of sincerity over the irony over the sincerity. It was an irony sandwich, then, which tasted mostly like sincerity, like a cheap, bad sandwich.
- Daniel Handler, "Barely", Adverbs (2006)

Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials.
- Ruhollah Khomeini, as quoted in The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (1986), by Amir Taheri, Adler & Adler, p. 259

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King Jr., quoted on Goodreads

To seek sincerity above all things is perhaps, at bottom, not to want to be transformed; it is to cling to yourself, to have a morbid love of yourself, just as you are, that is to say, false. It is to refuse release.
- Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 127

The temper I am of requires me to keep away from court. Heaven, when it sent me into the world, did not give me a soul suited to the air of courts. I do not find in myself the virtues necessary to succeed, and make my fortune there. My chief talent is to be frank and sincere.
- Molière, Alcèste in The Misanthrope, Act 4, Scene 4

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: “this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 129

You seem to be going in for sincerity today. It isn't becoming to you, really — except as an obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are, I advise. There's a sort of sincerity in that, you know. And, after all, you must confess you like that better.
- Eugene O'Neill, The Hairy Ape (1922), Aunt: Scene 2

I am taking my sweater off, so now you know it's serious.
- Itzhak Perlman, Houston Symphony Rehearsal of the Mozart Requiem, 2023

I am playful in words but sincere in action.
- Suman Pokhrel quoted on Goodreads

One who is serious all day will never have a good time, while one who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.
- Ptahhotep The Maxims of Ptahhotep (c. 2350 BC) Maxim no. 25

Sentir mon Cœur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man—the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings.… The value of words help to define the feeling itself.… The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.
- Herbert Read, The Cult of Sincerity (1968), p. 16

All art is artifice, and therefore no work of art is sincere. Once we become conscious of a feeling and attempt to make a corresponding form, we are engaged in an ac? tivity which, far from being sincere, is prepared (as any artist if he is "sincere" will tell you) to moderate the feeling to fit the form. The artist's feeling for form is stronger than a formless feeling. Art is the definition, the delimitation, of feeling. To quote a powerful image of Stravinsky's (in The Poetics of Music) the lava is already cold by the time it has assumed a form. When we recognize feeling in a work of art, it is not the artist's feeling: it is our own feeling transferred to a ready form. A work of art is a feeling in-formed.
- Herbert Read (1968). 20th Anniversary Issue. "The Cult of Sincerity." The Hudson Review, 21(1), 53–74. doi:10.2307/3849512, p. 57

[Rousseau], [t]he man who would be sincere is unconsciously insincere. This confirms the supposition I began with: that a contradiction exists between self-consciousness and sincerity. To be conscious of a self, vis-a-vis other selves, is already to expose that self to corruption.
- Herbert Read (1968). 20th Anniversary Issue. "The Cult of Sincerity." The Hudson Review, 21(1), 53–74. doi:10.2307/3849512, p. 66

I cannot find in Scripture that any one ever got to heaven merely by sincerity, or was accepted with God if he was only earnest in maintaining his own views.… Sincerity cannot put away sin.
- John Charles Ryle, Only One Way (Ipswich: Hunt & Son, 1850), p. 17

If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?
- José Saramago, Blindness

Bashful sincerity and comely love.
- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act IV, scene 1, line 55

Men should be what they seem;
Or those that be not, would they might seem none!
- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 126

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
- Mark Twain, quoted on Goodreads

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
- Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 712.

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.
- James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, Education

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
- James Russell Lowell, Essay on Pope

There is no greater delight than to be conscious of sincerity on self-examination.
- Mencius, Works, Book VII, Chapter IV

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

Sincerity and truth form the basis of every virtue.
Be what thou seemest; live thy creed;
Hold up to earth the torch divine;
Be what thou prayest to be made;
Let the great Master's steps be thine.
- Horatius Bonar, p. 553

Let every man examine his own sincerity, for every man must bear his own burden — the burden of his own sin —unless he has transferred it to the appointed Saviour.
- James Hamilton, p. 554

Try how much of the word of God you can understand, and what is more, try how much you can practice. A sincere wish and purpose to do the will of God, will be your best way to know the mind of God.
- John Angell James, p. 554

True emotions and sincere words never perish. The great heart of humanity gladly receives and embalms every true utterance of the humblest of its offspring.
- Elias Lyman Magoon, p. 554