I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place, is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better, and actuly safer, than a lie.
– Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 28. Mary Jane is crying because in selling the Wilks’s slaves, the Duke and King separated a mother from her children. Moved by her tears, Huck blurts out that the family will be reunited in two weeks, and reveals that the Duke and King are not her uncles but a couple of frauds.