LYING QUOTES VIII

quotations about lies and lying

Every lie, great or small, is the brink of a precipice, the depth of which nothing but Omniscience can fathom.

CHARLES READE

It Is Never Too Late to Mend

Tags: Charles Reade


An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Brave New World Revisited

Tags: Aldous Huxley


When the world has once got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to get it out of the world. You beat it about the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and lo! the next day it is as healthy as ever.

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

England and the English

Tags: Edward Bulwer Lytton


The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

V. S. NAIPAUL

In a Free State

Tags: V. S. Naipaul


There is nothing worse for the lying soul than the mirror of reality.

STEVE MARABOLI

Unapologetically You

Tags: reality


It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

foreward, Sweet Bird of Youth

Tags: Tennessee Williams


A concealed truth, that's all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered.

JOSEPHINE HART

Damage

Tags: Josephine Hart


The least veracious man will tell truly the color of his coat, the hour of his dinner, the materials of his shoes.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth.

AMBROSE BIERCE

The Devil's Dictionary

Tags: Ambrose Bierce


He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

All's Well That Ends Well


We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it's too weird to imagine people who aren't casually lying, pretty much all the time.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Eating the Dinosaur


A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it, else the hand would cut itself which sought to drive it home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


A good man will not lie, although it be for his profit.

CICERO

attributed, Day's Collacon


Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Hamlet


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.

NORMAN MAILER

"First Advertisement for Myself", Advertisements for Myself

Tags: Norman Mailer


None speaks false, when there is none to hear.

JAMES BEATTIE

The Minstrel


Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

JONATHAN SWIFT

The Examiner, Nov. 9, 1710

Tags: Jonathan Swift


When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

No Country for Old Men

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


A liar is always lavish of oaths.

PIERRE CORNEILLE

Le Menteur

Tags: Pierre Corneille


These lies are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Henry IV, Part I