Quotes About Deception

But I also know that you can lie not only by what you say but what you don't say.

Caroline did not ask the boys if they were thinking about the time she threw their mother's chocolate chiffon cake in the river because she thought it was a trick. And the Hatfords certainly did not say anything to the girls about what they had done to Mrs. Malloy's pumpkin chiffon pie that the girls had delivered at their mother's instruction. Both mothers seemed to take to chiffon, that was certain.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

Appearance tyrannizes over truth.

And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.

Pleasure is the bait of sin

Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.

Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable ... and when it happens to someone often ... he ends up ... hating everyone

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

Is it not true that the clever rogue is like the runner who runs well for the first half of the course, but flags before reaching the goal: he is quick off the mark, but ends in disgrace and slinks away crestfallen and uncrowned. The crown is the prize of the really good runner who perseveres to the end.

For the extreme of injustice is to seem to be just when one is not.

He who is a useful keeper of anything is also a better thief.

Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely? That

But far more dangerous are the others, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods

Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

Everything that deceives also enchants.

True, how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

Pues bien, del mismo modo el malo, si ha de ser un hombre auténticamente malo, debe reali­zar con destreza sus malas acciones y pasar inadvertido con ellas. Y al que se deje sorprender en ellas hay que considerarlo inhábil, pues no hay mayor perfección en el mal que el parecer ser bueno no siéndolo.

So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:) for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice.

cuenta Estesí­coro que, por ignorancia de la verdad, se luchó ante Troya en torno a la apariencia de Helena?

Son, indiscutiblemente, difíciles de desenmascarar, pues ni siquiera es posible hacerles subir a este estrado para que den la cara y puedan ser interrogados, por lo que me veo obligado, como vulgarmente se dice, a batirme contra las sombras y a refutar sus argumentos sin que nadie me replique.

All men are by nature equal, and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.