Quotes About Deception

Between a man and woman in love, no lie is small or harmless.

I reminded myself that the heart is deceitful above all things.

She understood at least as well as I did what corruption and pitiless cruelty might be hidden behind the masks that some people wore.

Politics was an illusion of service that cloaked the corruption of power.

He is not an agent of justice, for there can be little or no real justice in this broken world, where culture and politics are forever redefining the word. Instead, he is an agent of truth, which can't be endlessly redefined, which simply is, though often difficult to uncover. His task is to bring the truth to those who live by lies and deception, and deliver unto them the rightful consequences of their deceit.

He's a hollow man, he believes in nothing. Hollow men are vulnerable to anyone who offers them something that might fill the void and make them feel less empty.

Lying won't get you anything but misery.

Pero nadie es por completo honesto con todo el mundo, siempre y en todos los aspectos. Qué diantre, la necesidad de engañar no es más que otra de las maldiciones que debe soportar nuestra pobre especie.

By now, he should not be the least surprised by the capacity of evil people to deceive their credulous friends and neighbors—or by the unconscious preference of so many people to be deceived.

Casinos have no windows, no clocks. The masters of the games want their customers to forget the passage of time, to lay down just one more bet, and then one more.

The penitent face of the religieuse collapsed into the greedy hookworm maw, as though it ate its own false countenance

There are numerous tools with which to conceal the truth, although nothing has been quite as effective and reassuring as six or eight or ten feet of compacted earth.

a smile in which malice tried to pass as friendly intent, in which amusement was in fact dripping venom.

Friendship is an illusion.. Like love and compassion!

O, WHAT MAY MAN WITHIN HIM HIDE, THOUGH ANGEL ON THE OUTWARD SIDE! —William Shakespeare

But no lie, regardless of how well intended, could deceive in telepathic communication

full of classes he has never taken, grades he never earned

But no lie, regardless of how well intended, could deceive in telepathic communication, because the truth of the sender's motives was inextricably bound up in the emotions that were transmitted with the words.

Treat the study as if we're in a Daphne du Maurier novel, as if this house is an alternate-universe version of Manderley, and I am keeping either the murdered and mummified corpse of Rebecca or Mrs. Danvers—or both!—behind that locked door, to spare myself from a long prison sentence.

Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance.

Evil can disguise itself in piety and charity

It ain't a lie that's gonna put me in the pit with Al Capone, but it's one step on a slippery slope I been down before.

he is a wizard at persuading police not to arrest him

In a world that daily disconnects further from truth, more and more people accept the virtual in place of the real, and all things virtual are also malleable.