"Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offense he spoke the word he meant." - Thomas B. Aldrich


"Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you." - William Blake


"Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gentleman." - James F. Cooper


"Frank and explicit -- that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others." - Benjamin Disraeli


"Candor is the brightest gem of criticism." - Benjamin Disraeli


"There is no wisdom like frankness." - Benjamin Disraeli


"To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion." - George Eliot


"A No uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a Yes merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble." - Mahatma Gandhi


"If all hearts were open and all desires known -- as they would be if people showed their souls -- how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place!" - Thomas Hardy


"There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body." - William Hazlitt


"We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities; it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate." - William James


"You may tell a man thou art a fiend, but not your nose wants blowing; to him alone who can bear a thing of that kind, you may tell all." - Johann Kaspar Lavater


"Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other." - George Macdonald


"It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudosimplicities of brutal directness." - Marshall Mcluhan


"Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think." - Michel Eyquem De Montaigne


"Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards." - George Orwell


"Examine what is said, not him who speaks." - Arabian Proverb