On lying

We need an ethics of lying, for very few of us are strong enough actually to live strictly by the maxim: 'always truthful!' Given that this is the case, we are then in the situation either of believing the moral absolute implied in that maxim even as we fall short of it (which is to say, of putting ourselves to the inconvenience of having always to lie), or, more ethically, or finding a ground that will help us distinguish between those times when a lie is the wrong thing to utter and the times when it is the right thing. I'm not sure what that ground is; except that it cannot be expediency.