Quotes About Deception

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

Never mistake motion for action.

Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book.

I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

If he lived by a lie he should try to die by it

I dried my hands and took out my pocket-book from the inside of my tunic hanging on the wall. Rinaldi took the note, folded it without rising from the bed and slid it in his breeches pocket. He smiled, I must make on Miss Barkley the impression of a man of sufficient wealth. You are my great and good friend and financial protector. Go to hell, I said.

everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive. The boy keeps me alive, he thought. I must not deceive myself too much.

It was one of those things that gave you a false feeling of soldering.

She's vicious,' Miss Stein said. 'She's truly vicious, so she can never be happy except with new people. She corrupts people.

For many things are not as they appear. Discipline must come from trust and confidence.

It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell.

How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth.

Every day brings some disappointment. -No, every day brings new and beautiful illusion. But, everything that's not real in one illusion you can chop it off, like cutting with the blade of a razor.

Look at the ugliness. Yet one has a feeling within one that blinds a man while he loves you. You, with that feeling, blind him, and blind yourself. Then, one day, for no reason, he sees you as ugly as you really are and he is not blind anymore and then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling...

Con not, that thou be not conned.

You, you, he raged at himself. Yes, you. You told yourself the first time you saw him that when he would be friendly would be when the treachery would come.

It was not her fault that when he went to her he was already over. How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said: that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable

When I had written a novel before, the one that had been lost in the bag stolen at the Gare de Lyon, I still had the lyric facility of boyhood that was as perishable and as deceptive as youth was. I knew that it was probably a good thing that it was lost, but I knew too that I must write a novel.

He had died in a trap that he had helped only a little to set, and they had all betrayed him in their various ways before he died. All sentimental people are betrayed so many times.

i looked at him and his marked-for-death look and i thought, you con man conning me with your con. i've seen a battalion in the dust on the road, a third of them for death or worse and no special marks on them, the dust for all, and you and your marked-for-death look, you con man, making a living out of your death. now you will con me. con not, that thou be not conned. death was not conning with him. it was coming all right.

Lincoln almost got it right.  Sure you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Who cares!  All you really have to do is fool most of the people right before the election.

We all know the old adage about why an elephant with all its power can be held in place by a small rope and peg. This is because elephants remember when they were babies and did not have the strength to pull the peg out of the ground. In short, elephants remain captive because their memories lie to them. They tell them that their past is their future—that what they experienced before will always be the reality that is before them.

Giova sembrare stolti senza esserlo

Love is an exercise in selective perception, even a delicious deception as well, though who cares about that in the beginning?