Show me a liar, and I’ll show thee a thief.

The proverb links two moral failures—lying and stealing—by suggesting they commonly travel together. Herbert’s point is less a literal claim that every liar is a thief than a diagnosis of character: once a person is willing to violate truth, other boundaries (including respect for others’ property) become easier to cross. In the ethical and religious climate Herbert wrote for, truthfulness was a cornerstone virtue; to lie was to corrode trust, community, and one’s own conscience. The aphorism also works as a warning about credibility: if someone is caught lying, their integrity in other matters is suspect, because deception often serves self-interest in ways that can shade into fraud or theft.