Quotes About Lies

Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's honour. One lies all one's life long, even, especially, perhaps only, to those who love one. For they alone make us fear for our pleasure and desire their esteem.

Swann could at once detect in this story one of those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise, console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood which they have to invent, thinking that it can be safely incorporated, and will lend the whole story an air of verisimilitude.

Lies, so often misleading and which form the substance of all conversations, are less effective in covering up a feeling of dislike or of self-interest, or a visit one would rather people did not know about, or a one-day fling one wants to conceal from one's wife - than a good reputation is in utterly overshadowing disreputable habits.

so great can the gulf be between a lying woman's invention and the idea which her lover, relying on her lies, has formed of the truth.

He now looked death in the face and no longer beheld the scenes that would surround his death. He wanted to remain like that until the end, no longer prey to his lies, which, by trying to bring him a beautiful and wonderful agony, would have added the last straw to his profanations by soiling the mysteries of his death just as it had concealed from him the mysteries of his life.

Three-quarters of the expenditure of wit and the lies told out of vanity that have been squandered since the world began by people who in doing so merely diminish themselves have been squandered on inferiors.

Depression lies," said Jenny Lawson . "Because every single time, it says, 'You'll never come out of this again. You are absolutely worthless, your family is better off without you.' And then I remind myself depression lies. Those things are lies.

Lies do not in themselves lead to poor outcomes, nor does truth in every circumstance lead to good ones. As with so many things, context matters.

Your pinky promises sit on a throne of lies

When a lie has negative consequences, people dislike it. But otherwise? They move on, and eventually the lie as a lie is forgotten, or in this case, codified as the foundation of religious practice and buffed and sanded into something prettier and more congenial.

generally perfectly okay for most other folks. When a lie has negative consequences, people dislike it. But otherwise? They move on, and eventually the lie as a lie is forgotten, or in this case, codified as the foundation of religious practice and buffed and sanded into something prettier and more congenial.

He had know guys all his life who gave him that feeling. Even as a kid. People who were always lying, even when they didn't have to.

Literacy is vital to democracy. For if the governed can neither understand their leaders nor distinguish truth from lies, then a democracy descends into oligarchy, a government by and for the elite few.

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.

You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business.They should've trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies.

Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also––either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.

Una mentira es algo bueno y valioso. Un objeto precioso e imponderable que conviene tener en reserva. Pero nunca utilices esta joya hasta que hayas agotado todas las verdades. La verdad es patrimonio común, algo que siempre está a mano, pero las mentiras hay que inventarlas y jamás puedes estar seguro de su eficacia hasta que las hayas usado... y entonces es demasiado tarde

At the very first he knew he was lying, but it was not long before he was equally sure that every one of his stories was true.

The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little why.

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

My work has made me tolerant of memory mistakes by family and friends. You don't have to call them lies. I think we could be generous and say maybe this is a false memory.

It destroys you when people say complete mistruths about your family.

[Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton] knew they would throw every lie they could at me and my family and my loved ones. They knew they would stop at nothing to try to stop me.

My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to").