Quotes About Deception

There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.

He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

We must have humbug, we all like humbug, we couldn't get on without humbug.

It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves and a skeleton of truth that we never did.

Mr. Guppy suspects everybody....of entertaining... Sinister designs upon him....he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot, where there is no plot; and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary

There never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.

He [Old Mr. Turveydrop] was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear.

T]hey somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.

He melts, I think. He goes like a drop of froth. You look at him, and there he is. You look at him again, and - there he isn't.

His shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked too long; his hair looked too limp; his features looked too mean; his exposed throat looked as if a halter would have done it good.

Many a gentleman lives well upon a soft head, who would find a heart of the same quality a very great drawback.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing compared to self-swindlers.

We hear sometimes of an action for damages against the unqualified medical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in pretending to heal it. But, what of the hundreds of thousands of minds that have been deformed for ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended to form them!

But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.

Bolje je i nemati o?i nego ih imati tako zle!

Thus, with no one to advise her—for she could advise with no one without seeming to complain against him—gentle Florence tossed on an uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr. Carker, like a scaly monster of the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her.

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

It is wonderful how Virtue turns from dirty stockings; and how Vice, married to ribbons and a little gay attire, changes her name, as wedded ladies do, and becomes Romance." ---From Charles Dickens' Preface to Oliver Twist, printed in 1841

And this is another spell against which the shedder of blood for ever strives in vain. There are fifty doors by which discovery may enter. With infinite pains and cunning, he double locks and bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standing wide open.

If great criminals told the truth—which, being great criminals, they do not—they would very rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it.

Door VIII. A Hand at Cards IX. The Game Made X. The Substance of the Shadow

Howsever they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same.

I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give to—me." "Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry look, "to deceive and entrap you?" "Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?" "Yes, and many others—all of them but you.