. Such an answer will give him
confidence in you; he will conceive an opinion of your veracity, of which
opinion you may afterward make very honest and fair advantages. But if,
in negotiations, you are looked upon as a liar and a trickster, no
confidence will be placed in you, nothing will be communicated to you,
and you will be in the situation of a man who has been burned in the
cheek; and who, from that mark, cannot afterward get an honest livelihood
if he would, but must continue a thief.

Lord Bacon, very justly, makes a distinction between simulation and
dissimulation; and allows the latter rather than the former; but still
observes, that they are the weaker sort of politicians who have recourse
to either. A man who has strength of mind and strength of parts, wants
neither of them. Certainly (says he) the ablest men that ever were, have
all had an openness and frankness of dealing, and a name of certainty and
veracity; but then, they were like horses well managed; for they could
tell, passing well, when to stop or turn; and at such times, when they
thought the case indeed required some dissimulation, if then they used
it, it came to pass that the former opinion spread abroad of their good
faith and clearness of dealing, made them almost invisible.

There are people who indulge themselves in a sort of lying, which they
reckon innocent, and which in one sense is so; for it hurts nobody but
themselves. This sort of lying is the spurious offspring of vanity,
begotten upon folly: these people deal in the marvelous; they have seen
some things that never existed; they have seen other things which they
never really saw, though they did exist, only because they were thought
worth seeing. Has anything remarkable been said or done in any place, or
in any company? they immediately present and declare themselves eye or
ear witnesses of it. They have done feats themselves, unattempted, or at
least unperformed by others. They are always the heroes of their own
fables; and think that they gain consideration, or at least present
attention, by it. Whereas, in truth, all that they get is ridicule and
contempt, not without a good degree of distrust; for one must naturally
conclude, that he who will tell any lie from idle vanity, will not
scruple telling a greater for interest. Had I really seen anything so
very extraordinary as to be almost incredible I would keep it to myself,
rather than by telling it give anybody room to doubt, fo