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.”

Of all the things you could be known for, plain honesty is the one that has to be maintained daily and cannot be awarded. Titles, positions and reputations can be given and taken away by other people, but the character of someone who tells the truth is built out of a long series of small occasions where lying would have been easier. It takes firmness because it is never settled.

Ask what you would most want said about you by someone who has worked with you closely. Then look at the nearest occasion this week where the easy version and the true version differ, and take the true one.