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The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.
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No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
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The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.
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Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.
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Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.
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Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
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Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
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Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
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We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
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I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with. And, in the end, I distilled everything down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.
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Life is the art of being well deceived.
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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others.
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The people of the world having once been deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself.
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Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
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He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.
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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
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I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
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It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
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The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
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The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.
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You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.
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We like to be deceived.
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Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
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Every cloud has a silver lining.
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To know how to disguise is the knowledge of kings.
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It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the fronts people assume before one another's eyes, and the front a writer puts on the face of reality.
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Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.
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For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
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Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.
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All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.
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The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
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The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
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A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.
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When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
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Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
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Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.
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The art of pleasing is the art of deception.
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