Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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.

Milosz, Ceslaw

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.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.

Byron, Lord

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Voltaire

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

Canetti, Elias

Don't lie if you don't have to.

Szilard, Leo

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

Mcilvanney, William

11.

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.

Montague, C. E.

12.

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.

Belloc, Hilaire

13.

This is the punishment of a liar: he is not believed, even when he speaks the truth.

Talmud, The

14.

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Greene, Graham

15.

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.

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

Steiner, George

17.

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

18.

I detest the man who hides one thing in the depth of his heart and speaks forth another.

Homer

19.

By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man.

Kant, Immanuel

20.

If you do not wish to be lied to, do not ask questions. If there were no questions, there would be no lies.

Traven, B.

21.

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?

Crisp, Quentin

22.

A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Watt, James

23.

That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation.

Haig, Alexander

24.

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

Beecher, Lyman

25.

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

Crowley, Aleister

26.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

Churchill, Winston

27.

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.

Proust, Marcel

28.

It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.

Armstrong, Robert

29.

Burning lies led to my silent cries Keeping it inside I've got everything to hide. lustful desire, a burning fire You are the flame, You are to blame. Beautiful light deliver me from fright dreams full of lust. Or is the dream dreaming us? PHYSICAL PAIN don't call me insane. I don't want to be dead but all beautiful colors bleed to red

30.

The middle of the road is where the white line is -- and that's the worst place to drive.

Frost, Robert

31.

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

33.

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

Thatcher, Margaret

34.

Where lies are easily admitted, the father of lies is not easily kept out. Source unknown A great leader molds public opinion, a wise leader listens to it.

35.

Never to lie is to have no lock to your door, you are never wholly alone.

Bowen, Elizabeth

36.

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.

Mencken, H. L.

37.

Some lies are so well disguised to resemble truth, that we should be poor judges of the truth not to believe them.

38.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Aristotle

39.

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

40.

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.

Luce, Clare Boothe

41.

If one cannot invent a really convincing lie, it is often better to stick to the truth.

Thirkell, Angela

42.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

43.

A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.

Twain, Mark

44.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Proust, Marcel

45.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

46.

I do myself a greater injury in lying that I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

47.

When lying, be emphatic and indignant, thus behaving like your children.

Feather, William

48.

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.

Rowland, Helen

49.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

50.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

Stevenson, Robert Louis