Besides, going always armed, and having a very punctilious idea of their own gentility and consequence, they usually behaved to each other and to the Lowlanders with a good deal of formal politeness, which sometimes even procured them the character of insincerity." "Falsehood belongs to an early period of society, as well as the deferential forms which we style politeness," I replied.

"A child does not see the least moral beauty in truth until he has been flogged half a dozen times.

It is so easy, and apparently so natural, to deny what you cannot be easily convicted of, that a savage as well as a child lies to excuse himself almost as instinctively as he raises his hand to protect his head.

The old saying, 'Confess and be hanged,' carries much argument in it.

I observed a remark the other day in old Birrel.