Lying Quotes

A good memory is needed once we have lied.

Corneille

Show me a liar and I will show thee a thief.

George Edward Herbert

Who dares think one thing and another tell My heart detests him as the gates of hell.

Homer

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.

George Bernard Shaw

That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright - But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.'

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Peter said Ananias why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?... And Ananias hearing these words fell down and gave up the ghost.

Bible

And after all what is a lie? Tis but The truth in masquerade.

A liar is not believed even though he tell the truth.

Cicero

Any fool can tell the truth but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Terminological inexactitude

Winston Churchill

Oh don't tell me of facts - I never believe in facts you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts except figures.

Travellers from afar can lie with impunity.

Truth is the safest lie.

All men are born truthful and die liars.

The lie is a condition of life.

Friedrich Nietzsche

It takes a wise man to handle a lie. A fool had better remain honest.

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

Who lies for you will lie against you.

Bosnian Proverb

The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him you have no business with consequences you are to tell the truth.

I do not mind lying but I hate inaccuracy.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

A half-truth is a whole lie.

A liar should have a good memory.

There's a very thin difference between lying and breaking the promise.

Toba Beta

Moreover, grandmothers of students who aren't doing so well in class are at even higher risk - students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose a grandmother compared with non-failing students. In a paper exploring this sad connection, Adam speculates that the phenomenon is due to intrafamilial dynamics, which is to say, students' grandmothers care so much about their grandchildren that they worry themselves to death over the outcome of exams.

Euphemisms persist because lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

The one undeniable benefit of having spent some time in the closet is that it nurtures a talent that you can fall back on any time: lying convincingly. Sometimes I worried that queer kids in the twenty-first century coming out at twelve, or even younger, would never develop that valuable skill.

Bob Smith

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.

Were you lying?""I never lie," he said piously. "About what?""The sand, the snake."For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.

Megan Whalen Turner

The biggest liar in the world is They Say.

Douglas Malloch

A lie carries a weight that is exponentially higher than the truth. It’s weight will retard growth directly in proportion to the area lied.

Howard L. Salter

Tell me it's not true."He sighed. "Fine. It's not true."...And yet..."Are you lying?"He rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm lying.""Not cool." I muttered.Kyle shrugged. "I didn't want you to start hyperventilating again." His hair fell over his eyes and he brushed it aside. "I figured annoying you was safer than admitting anything.

Kathleen Peacock

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

Fiction may be about lying – on the surface, anyway – but fiction is about hiding the truth behind those lies. It's about using those lies to say something true and real. It's about showing the reader something. It's about making them

I lied," I said. ..."I know it," he said."Then do something about it. Do anything, just so it's something.""I cant," he said."There aint anything to do? Not anything?""I didn't say that," Grandfather said. "I said I couldn't. You can.""What?" I said. "How can I forget it? Tell me how to.""You cant," he said. "Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable.""Then what can I do?""Live with it," Grandfather said."Live with it? You mean, forever? For the rest of my life? Not ever to get rid of it? Never? I cant. Dont you see that I cant?""Yes you can," he said. "You will. A gentleman always does. A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should.

William Faulkner

Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.

Winston S. Churchill

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Just got to fnafflebrump caddwallame, all right?" Edie says, and no one pays attention. She learned at Lady Gravely's that nonsense which can be misheard is a very good way to lie without getting caught. People just insert whatever they think you must be doing, and - having lied to themselves on your behalf - are disinclined to check up on you.

Resorting to lying or cheating in any competition amounts to conceding defeat.

Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!

Pretending is another way of lying, and I am so good at both.

Why are you lying to me? I'm so tired of people lying to me. Do I not deserve the truth? Do I look like someone who can't handle it?

having someone who likes you so much that they think everything you say is the truth has got to be a liar’s paradise

Christopher Paul Curtis

No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.

Rex Stout

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

Jerome K. Jerome

Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.

Liars are exhausting people.

She lied to me today," Archie said."A teenager?" Susan said with faux surprise. "Lying to an authority figure? Impossible.

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

Well." Wolfe was judicious. "You were not under oath. The police have been lied to informally many times by many people, including me. The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly valued and frequently exercised.

Rex Stout

The lie detector didn’t react to anything I said, but I wouldn’t dare smile.

Embee

By wearing cosmetics a woman seeks to look younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would. Honesty doesn't require that she issue a continuous disclaimer: "I see you are looking at my face. Please be aware that I don't look this good first thing in the morning.

Are you okay?” someone asked.t“I’m fine,” I snapped, turning to face Jayden Griffin.t“I have to admit, you’re getting better at lying, Tess Embers,” he said quietly. “However, I know you’re not okay.

Embee

That’s not necessary,” Mr. Bradshaw said, “although you are all perfectly welcome in the guest rooms upstairs, I won’t ask you to lie to your-”t“Mr. Bradshaw.” Nathan grinned. “You’ve been asking us to lie to our parents from the moment we each set foot in this house. We’re spies; we’ll all find excuses to stay here. No one wants to leave the only place in the city where the Pentagon won’t dare enter. Not tonight. Not after what happened.

Embee

Do we really need a study on why people lie? They lie because it's easy, and cowards are good at "easy." Telling the truth takes moxie, and few have it.

Donna Lynn Hope

If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.

Arthur Schopenhauer

This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

Otto von Bismarck

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