quotations about lies and lying
On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.
ISABEL FONSECA
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey
These lies are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part I
Falsehood has a perennial spring.
EDMUND BURKE
speech on American Taxation, 1774
As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Vicar of Wakefield
We all know that a lie needs no other grounds, than the invention of the liar; and to take for granted as truth, all that is alleged against the fame of others, is a species of credulity, that men would blush at on any other subject.
JANE PORTER
Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks
With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.
GAO XINGJIAN
"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium
Excellent speech becomes not a fool: much less do lying lips a prince.
BIBLE
Proverbs 17:7
There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found; I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.
T. CARLYLE
attributed, Many Thoughts of Many Minds
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Winston Churchill's Great Quotation Book: From Alamein to Zest for Life
The thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.
GLEN COOK
Soldiers Live
There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man's self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not, that he is. And the third, simulation, in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be, that he is not.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
"Of Simulation and Dissimulation", Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.
S. E. HINTON
The Outsiders
All lies, white or black, disgrace a gentleman, although I grant there is a difference: to say the least of it, it is a dangerous habit, for white lies are but the gentleman ushers to black ones.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
Peter Simple
There are some disguised falsehoods so like truths, that 'twould be to judge ill not to be deceived by them.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
For the wretched conceit of a liar, in supposing himself clever enough to invent stories so ingenious that they shall, for any time, impose on people for the truth, and the still grosser folly in imagining, as he must do, that the world will, without investigation and analysis, take for granted anything he chooses to assert--that world more shrewd, more cunning, and as prying as himself--what a conceited ass must the liar be! How superior over others in cunning must he not believe himself! What fools must he not suppose the rest of mankind!
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
I never lie ... at least not to those I don't love.
ANNE RICE
The Vampire Lestat
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
She Stoops to Conquer
We need falsifications to make the past inhabitable.
FRANS KELLENDONK
Het Complete Werk
And this wasn't lying, not really. It was leaving out.
STEPHEN KING
Hearts in Atlantis