Honesty is seldom ingratiating and often discomfiting.
Interpretation
Honesty can create discomfort and may not always win favor with others.
In this quote, Tom Stoppard highlights the paradox of honesty; while being truthful is a virtuous quality, it can also lead to awkwardness or unhappiness in interactions with others. People may find blunt honesty disarming or offensive, suggesting that the truth can be challenging to accept or might strain relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics, this quote can remind people that honesty might lead to uncomfortable truths that need to be faced.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be.
You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way.
Scripture is filled with examples of men and women whom God used late in life, often with great impact - men and women who refused to use old age as an excuse to ignore what God wanted them to do.
When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.
Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.
We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.
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