meaning - The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

What does "the faster we counted our spoons" mean in the citation above?

Answer

The Ralph Waldo Emerson quote in your question riffs off the idiom to count one's spoons meaning, as others have noted, to check and make sure that nothing has been stolen by suspicious guests. The phrase can be traced back to James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791:

Edit (5/4/12): Note this passage has been turned up 23 years earlier in another Boswell book. See Hugo's link in the comment below.

Comments

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