Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world.  Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it brings you to the grave, as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there.  You love not death; love not the cause of death.—­Baxter.

Sincerity.—­I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be “consistent.”—­Holmes.

If the show of any thing be good for any thing, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to?—­Tillotson.

The only conclusive evidence of a man’s sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle.  Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.—­Lowell.

Private sincerity is a public welfare.—­Bartol.

I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain, what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an “honest man.”—­Washington.

Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform and make good what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.—­Tillotson.

Let us then be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship.—­Longfellow.

Slander.—­When will talkers refrain from evil-speaking?  When listeners refrain from evil-hearing.—­Hare.

Never throw mud.  You may miss your mark, but you must have dirty hands.—­Joseph Parker.

Remember, when incited to slander, that it is only he among you who is without sin that may cast the first stone.—­Hosea Ballou.

                 Slander,

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue
Out-venoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie
All corners of the world:  kings, queens, and states,
Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave
This viperous slander enters. 

          
                          —­Shakespeare.

Nor do they trust their tongues alone,
But speak a language of their own;
Can read a nod, a shrug, a look,
Far better than a printed book;
Convey a libel in a frown,
And wink a reputation down;
Or, by the tossing of the fan,
describe the lady and the man. 

          
                          —­Swift.

Those men who carry about and who listen to accusations, should all be hanged, if so it could be at my decision—­the carriers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears.—­Plautus.