Quotes About Deception

even the worst men wanted to be perceived as better than they were. How else could hypocrisy have risen to such delirious levels?

was he trapped in a nest of vipers able to worm themselves into people's sympathies? Was he another one?

I've always been afraid of people in possession of what they believe is the truth. They'll do anything to see that the facts are changed and whipped into shape to agree with it.

Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

We are so customed to disguise ourselves to others that, in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.

They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.

It was if the charming theatrical curtain had dropped away and I saw him for the first time as he really was: not the benign old sage, the indulgent and protective good-parent of my dreams, but ambiguous, a moral neutral, whose beguiling trappings concealed a being watchful, capricious, and heartless.

Viewed from a distance, his character projected an impression of solidity and wholeness which was in fact as insubstantial as a hologram; up close, he was all motes and light, you could pass your hand right through him. If you stepped back far enough, however, the illusion would click in again and there he would be, bigger than life, squinting at you from behind his little glasses and raking back a dank lock of hair with one hand.

Maybe that's why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they've been duped by the same pair of eyes.

That's the first law of magic, Specs. Misdirection. Never forget it.

I met her my first year of college, and was initially attracted to her because she seemed an intelligent, brooding malcontent like myself; but after about a month, during which time she'd firmly glued herself to me, I began to realize, with some little horror, that she was nothing more than a lowbrow, pop-psychology version of Sylvia Plath.

How could the apartment have seemed so permanent and solid-looking when it was only a stage set, waiting to be struck and carried away by movers in uniform?

Whatever else one may say about guilt, it certainly lends one diabolical powers of invention;

Well, is true. I did know. Because if possible to paint fakes that look like that? Las Vegas would be the most beautiful city in the history of earth!

I never realized, you know, how much we rely on appearances, he said. It's not that we're so smart, it's just that we don't look like we did it. We might as well be a bunch of Sunday-school teachers as far as everyone else is concerned. But these guys won't be taken in by that.

Years ago, in an old notebook, I wrote: One of Julian's most attractive qualities is his inability to see anyone, or anything, in its true light. And under it, in a different ink, maybe one of my most attractive qualities, as well(?) -Richard

That is to say: I wanted to maintain the illusion that their dealings with me were completely straightforward; that we were all friends, and no secrets, though the plain fact of it was that there were plenty of things they didn't let me in on and would not for some time. And though I tried to ignore this I was aware of it all the same.

Right," I said, after an off-balance pause. A knocker, in the trade, was a shark who charmed his way into old people's homes: to cheat them of valuables

At first I thought they were playing to an

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves. — FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn't want to see.

never the way it seems—all good, all bad.

They understood not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.

The devil approached the citadel of his heart by stealth, with many zigzags and parallels.