Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

If you wish to strengthen a lie, mix a little truth in with it.

Zohar

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

Thirkell, Angela

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death's the other.

Williams, Tennessee

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

Thatcher, Margaret

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.

Wilde, Oscar

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

I would dodge, not lie, in the national interest.

Speakes, Larry

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

Canetti, Elias

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won t.

Twain, Mark

10.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

11.

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

12.

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

Byron, Lord

13.

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

Haig, Alexander

14.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

15.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Miller, Henry

16.

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.

17.

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

18.

One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.

Twain, Mark

19.

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

20.

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

Proust, Marcel

21.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

24.

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

Wilde, Oscar

25.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

26.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

27.

No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

28.

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

Steiner, George

29.

There is no lie that a man will not believe; and there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.

Sterling, John

30.

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.

Franklin, Billy Boy

31.

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!

Bernanos, Georges

32.

Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth.

Phaedrus

33.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

34.

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

Watt, James

35.

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

36.

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.

Mailer, Norman

37.

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

Greene, Graham

38.

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

39.

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

Talmud, The

40.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

Twain, Mark

41.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

42.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

43.

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

Crowley, Aleister

44.

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

Armstrong, Robert

45.

When you rationalize, you do just that. You make rational lies.

46.

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

47.

It is easier to gather up a bag of loose feathers than to round up or head off a single lie.

48.

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

Feather, William

49.

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.

50.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole