Quotes About Deception

I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.

Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.

She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.

So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.

Clergymen, judges, statesmen--the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day--stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived.

Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, --oftener sooner than late,-- is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.

Denn kein Mensch kann für längere Zeit sich selbst das eine und der Menge ein anderes Gesicht zeigen, ohne am Ende in Verwirrung zu geraten, welches das echt ist.

What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.

Go, Annie, murmured he; I have deceived myself, and must suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied, and dreamed that you might give it me; but you lack the talisman, Annie, that should admit you into my secrets.

Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.

Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime.

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognise the his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.

Non c'è uomo che a forza di portare una maschera, non finisca per assimilare a questa anche il suo vero volto.

sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles;

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false?—it is impalpable?—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist

I find nothing so singular in life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

a poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing alive or dead, attempted to cast herself into the fire amid all that wrecked and broken trumpery of the world.

They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures, which steal from the people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers.

Non c'è uomo che a forza di portare una maschera, non finisca per assimilare a questa anche il suo vero volto.

When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the character of truth supernaturally revealed.

There is no good on earth; and sun is but a name. Come devil; for to thee is this world given.