quotations about lies and lying
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V. S. NAIPAUL
In a Free State
Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell.
HOMER
The Iliad
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
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
There is nothing worse for the lying soul than the mirror of reality.
STEVE MARABOLI
Unapologetically You
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
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World Revisited
He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
All's Well That Ends Well
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
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
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
FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
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
When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
WALTER BENJAMIN
One-Way Street
A liar is always lavish of oaths.
PIERRE CORNEILLE
Le Menteur
None speaks false, when there is none to hear.
JAMES BEATTIE
The Minstrel
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
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