115 quotes about Lies and Lying
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Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.
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Liars are always ready to take oaths.
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The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.
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It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
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It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.
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Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
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Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it
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It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
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What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!
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Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.
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Never to lie is to have no lock to your door, you are never wholly alone.
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When the world has got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to kill it. You beat it over the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and behold! the next day it is as healthy as ever.
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
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The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
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I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
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Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
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And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.
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Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.
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There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
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So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.
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I am a lie who always speaks the truth.
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A liar is full of oaths.
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Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically -- for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist -- but then what isn t?
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Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.
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Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
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It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest.
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A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.
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Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
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Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.
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Liars are the cause of all the sins and crimes in the world.
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Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
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When lying, be emphatic and indignant, thus behaving like your children.
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Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
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Lying rides upon debt's back.
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If a lie is repeated often enough all the dumb jackasses in the world not only get to believe it, they even swear by it.
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The middle of the road is where the white line is -- and that's the worst place to drive.
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There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
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He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.
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In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
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That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation.
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We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
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I detest the man who hides one thing in the depth of his heart and speaks forth another.
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He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time till at length it becomes habitual.
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By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man.
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No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
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Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forbearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that -- being what it is -- it falls so short of in fact and in deed.
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Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.
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Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
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When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.
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One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
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If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.
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Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
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A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.
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Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
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I do myself a greater injury in lying that I do him of whom I tell a lie.
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He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
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In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
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Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.
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The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
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The lie is a condition of life.
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One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
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No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody.
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Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth.
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To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.
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Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
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Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.
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They say is often a great liar.
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Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.
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Great talker, great liar.
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With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.
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Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.
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No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.
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Lies are usually caused by undue fear of men.
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The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
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A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
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Liars need to have good memories.
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All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
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If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
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Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.
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In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
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