Search for source of quote: "Always tell the truth..."

[Stephen Goranson]

Quoting "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>:

>    Would anyone (Fred?) know the origin of the following quote:
> "Always tell the truth. You will confound your enemies and conceal
> your true intentions."
>
>     I came across it years ago and since then have thought the
> attribution was to Disraeli. But now, with Google and YBQ available,
> I don't find it among Disraeli's quotes and thus far at least haven't
> been able to locate it on Google. I suspect I'm overlooking something
> obvious though.
>
>    Any help would be much appreciated.

The truth is that I don't know that origin. Perhaps it's a blend of different
quotes. Mark Twain (as noted in YBQ, I think) has "When in doubt, tell the
truth" cited as an epigraph from Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. By the way,
those same words turn up two years earlier in A Hard Woman: A Story in Scenes
By Violet Hunt (1895) p.79 Google Book full view. Twain might could have read
that, though I don't know if he did.

Mayhaps related is Oscar Wilde's "Always forgive you enemies; nothing annoys
them so much."

Possibly also Henry Wotton's "Tell the truth so as to puzzle and confound your
enemies" and, likely less likely, as it was in a private letter, "you shall
never be believed...'twill also put your adversaries to a loss."

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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