Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

The line personifies dishonesty as an insatiable, predatory force—“so grasping” that it would attempt even the impossible: deceiving an omniscient God. The hyperbole underscores both the audacity and the self-expanding nature of deceit: once one accepts dishonesty as a tool, it tends to overreach, seeking advantage in every arena and ignoring moral or metaphysical limits. The closing qualifier (“were it possible”) preserves the theological premise that God cannot be deceived, while sharpening the moral indictment: the problem is not merely that dishonesty lies, but that it is driven by a boundless appetite for gain that would, in principle, corrupt anything it could touch.