Quotes About Deception

the lie that tries to have us believe we are not inescapably alone in the world, and which, when we converse with someone, prevents us from admitting that it is not we who are speaking, that at such times we try to take on the semblance of other people, rather than be the self that differs from them.

Albertine would in any case either not have given me any answer or else a "no" in which the "n" would have been too hesitant and the "o" too resonant. Albertine never recounted facts that might harm her,

Reality is the cleverest of our enemies. It directs its attacks at those points in our heart where we were not expecting them, and where we had prepared no defense. Had Albertine been lying to her aunt then, when she said every day that she was going to the Buttes-Chaumont, or to me when she said that she had never been there?

The truth is the most cunning of enemies. It launches its attacks upon the points of our heart at which we were not expecting them, and have prepared no defence.

But one reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one's mistress. We are beaten and happy because we believe ourselves unbeaten and victorious

If the conversations of two people bound by a tie of intimacy are full of lies, these crop up no less spontaneously in the conversations that a third person holds with a lover about the person with whom the latter is in love, whatever the sex of that person.

That is rather Pelléas, too," I suggested to Mme de Cambremer-Legrandin. "You know the scene I mean." "Of course I do" was what she said; but "I haven't the faintest idea" was the message proclaimed by her voice and features, which did not mould themselves to the shape of any recollection, and by her smile, which floated in the air, without support.

At a time when I believed what people told me, I should have been tempted to believe Germany, then Bulgaria, then Greece when they proclaimed their pacific intentions. But since my life with Albertine and with Françoise had accustomed me to suspect those motives they did not express, I did not allow any word, however right in appearance of William II, Ferdinand of Bulgaria or Constantine of Greece to deceive my instinct which divined what each one of them was plotting.

for it is not only by dint of lying to other people, but also by lying to oneself that one ceases to be aware that one is lying,

In any case, Swann was blind not only to the gaps in Odette's education, but also to her poverty of mind. Indeed, when she told one of her silly stories, he would listen to her full of an obliging, cheerful, even admiring attentiveness, which could be explained only by his finding her still sexually arousing;

It is true that this person is to blame for having lied to us, for she had sworn to us that she would always tell us the truth. But we know from our own shortcomings, towards other people, how little an oath is worth.

Humane motives are too sacred for the person they are used to appeal to not to bow before them, whether he believes them to be sincere or not; I did not wish for a moment to appear to be weighing up the relative importance of my invitation and the possible fatigue of Mme de Guermantes, and I promised to say nothing to her about the object of my visit, acting as though I had been completely taken in by this rigmarole M. de Guermantes had staged for my benefit.

Unlike most biographers it is here I leave Messrs. Burke and Hare, at the peak of their glory. Why destroy such an artistic effect by requiring them to languish along to the end of their lives, revealing their defects and their deceptions? We need only remember them, mask in hand, walking abroad on foggy nights. For their end was sordid like so many others. One of them, it appears, was hanged and Dr. Knox was forced to quit Edinburgh. Mr. Burke left no other works.

Slide by with a lie; don't admit it till you quit it. It

Sometimes things are less than they seem.

O sea que el amor es el cuento del tío por el que de pronto te venden lo que vos no querías ni regalado.

Ha comprendido que la mujer, que una sola mujer es más fuerte que todos los hombres juntos, y de ahí que los hombres necesiten apretarse entre ellos como niños débiles y asustadizos, necesiten fanfarronear y bravuconear y hablen del amor como de una matufia urdida por ellos para hacer caer a las mujeres en la celada del sexo. No hay que creerles, no hay que preocuparse. Llegado el caso, una mujer puede con una sola mirada desbaratar toda esa falsa tramoya de los hombres.

Art is a deception that creates real emotions — a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic.

It's kind of a circle. When people are scared, it's easy for them to decide anything different is evil. To forget that everyone is basically the same, that we all love our families and want regular lives. And what makes it worse is that some people use that. They make others scared on purpose, because they know if they do, everyone will start acting stupid." "But why would they want that?" "It's a way to control people. A way to get what they want.

When people are scared, it's easy for them to decide anything different is evil. To forget that everyone is basically the same, that we all love our families and want regular lives. And what makes it worse is that some people use that. They make others scared on purpose, because they know if they do, everyone will start acting stupid. -But why would they want that? -It's a way to control people. A way to get what they want.

People think I have so much faith in myself, but I have none. I have no faith in myself, or in what I can do, and yet people think I can do anything I want. That's how I seem, but it's an illusion. It's an act, nothing more.

A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?

It is the act of a bad man to deceive by falsehood.

There are no true friends in politics.