Their distinctive sensitivity has often been fostered by childhoods in which the consequences of being honest and forthright were especially difficult. 

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has been very forthright, very strong, talking about a united front in Europe and how we will come back with our tariffs as well.

By witnessing horror and disaster, it can make us want to be the kind of person who is a touch more forthright, a little more honest and moral, readier to face an unpleasant moment now and thereby head off a distant disaster.

At least two of the people we spoke to were quite forthright about some of the inequalities and some of the anger that some of the local residents had here.

Well, the Federal Reserve is very forthright about what they're doing.

is light. Be forthright. Despite your instinct to say "it's alright, I'm okay" - be honest.

Rousseau now contrasts favourably with modern mannered people. Rousseau tells us that people living in what he calls the state of nature were, in his eyes, far superior to educated and mannered Parisians. Their manners may have been simple, but they were honest and forthright, without the sins of what he now terms the over-civilised. Rousseau retells the story of civilisation as one of loss and decline, from a primordial state of fresh-faced curiosity, honesty and enthusiasm, to barbarous over-politeness, fakery and deceit. He describes the elaborate French court at Versailles as less civilised than an early human cave. Readers across Europe are astonished, and not a little impressed, by this impudence. For hundreds of years, moralists have been arguing that our natural selves are wild, harmful, over-sexual and dangerous, and that we must learn to tame them for the sake of others. Now Rousseau suggests the diametrical opposite. Civilisation has gone too far, it's our mannered selves that have become the problem, and the task of a properly evolved civilisation is to throw off the chains of manners, to relax us, strip off the etiquette and return to primitive frankness. Rousseau's point continues to echo down to our own times. It is his voice we can hear whenever someone sticks up for the simpler life, and suggests we dress less formally, eat dinner more casually and more readily say whatever is passing through our minds. New York, United States, 1827. A French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, is on a tour of the young United States in an effort to understand the spirit of a new kind of society, a democracy. He is immediately struck by American manners, or lack thereof. In Europe, reflects de Tocqueville, manners have been codified to emphasise hierarchical differences between people. Ordinary people defer to aristocrats, aristocrats to royalty, and so on. But in the United States, everything is done so as to suggest that there are no differences between people. No one takes off their hat to anyone, a postman can casually greet a judge, a mule driver can strike up cheerful banter with a wealthy merchant, and one cannot tell by someone's clothes whether they might be living in a mansion or a hut. Expressions like how you doing and hi are heard everywhere across the new republic. It could be charming, but the aristocratic de Tocqueville wryly notes a problem. These casual manners do not do away with class and wealth differences. They merely sentimentally disguise them. The manners of old Europe have been accused of being cruel in their stress on hierarchy.

That's a pretty forthright line.

We have the character of an island nation – independent, forthright, passionate in

Be forthright, despite your instinct to say, "It's alright.