e1cc00b
|
I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.
|
|
lying
truth
self-deception
|
S.E. Hinton |
11bf451
|
"By the time you swear you're his, Shivering and sighing. And he vows his passion is, Infinite, undying.
|
|
lying
passion
love
cynicism
|
Dorothy Parker |
e6e5568
|
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
|
|
lying
life
|
J.D. Salinger |
48d77b3
|
Anything is better than lies and deceit!
|
|
lying
lies
honesty
|
Leo Tolstoy |
fe24670
|
But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.
|
|
lying
truth
willful-ignorance
|
Ray Bradbury |
0db9fd8
|
The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort
|
|
lying
truth
|
Katherine Dunn |
d8736d4
|
...even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it's used for selfish or cowardly reasons
|
|
lying
lies
truth
inspirational
|
Jeanne Birdsall |
a1f36cc
|
"I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love."
|
|
lying
lies
lovers
hate
secret
love
truth
deciet
interview-with-the-vampire
lestat
lie
secrets
vampire
vampires
|
Anne Rice |
af00a0b
|
My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.
|
|
lying
humour
salvation
|
Diana Wynne Jones |
2c126dc
|
At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.
|
|
lying
love
heartbreaker
sue-bridehead
heartbroken
selfish
deception
flirting
cruel
|
Thomas Hardy |
76de407
|
The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.
|
|
being-someone-else
lying
humanity
inspirational
being-someone-else-you-are-not
hating-yourself
trying-to-be-like-someone-else
self-acceptance
hiding
shame
self-hatred
|
J.K. Rowling |
24d8c1e
|
He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he'd lie then, too.
|
|
lying
tricksters
|
Megan Whalen Turner |
d8100aa
|
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
|
|
lying
self-deception
|
W. Somerset Maugham |
02d061f
|
She looks honestly upset, but then, I've learned that I can't read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they're always lying.
|
|
lying
|
Holly Black |
5561a6e
|
Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.
|
|
lying
truth
|
David Mitchell |
88cf4fb
|
Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.
|
|
lying
lies
liars
|
John Steinbeck |
20303ea
|
The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, were being ashamed of what they were, lying about it, trying to be somebody else. Honesty was Fats' currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people, Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrasment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out, but Fats was attracted by rawness, by everything that was ugly but honest, by the dirty things about which the likes of his father felt humiliated and disgusted. Fats thought a lot about messiahs and pariahs; about men labeled mad or criminal; noble misfits shunned by the sleepy masses.
|
|
lying
humanity
honesty
humiliation
lie
|
J.K. Rowling |
414c9da
|
"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "I haven't wanted to lie to you." "I should hope so. You're the worst liar I've ever met." He thought about it for a moment, then added, "--or the best. Now I'm all confused."
|
|
lying
exposed-truth
jon
confusion
|
Tamora Pierce |
107236d
|
Sometimes you lie to deceive people. Sometimes you lie because you need the lie to become the truth.
|
|
lying
truth
|
Rick Riordan |
4abbbbc
|
It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.
|
|
lying
|
Kim Edwards |
630bc82
|
Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.
|
|
lying
|
Sam Harris |
3136c84
|
It's not lying when you do it to officers!
|
|
lying
superiors
|
Terry Pratchett |
cb3ece5
|
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.
|
|
lying
lies
shit
resistance
|
Steven Pressfield |
2841628
|
The thing about lying to your parents is, you have to do it to protect them. It's for their own good.
|
|
lying
truth
protect
parents
|
Sophie Kinsella |
87a1804
|
Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose.
|
|
lying
lies
humor
truth
sarcasm
|
Chuck Klosterman |
5f47215
|
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.
|
|
lying
truth
|
Stephen King |
eead848
|
In thy foul throat thou liest.
|
|
lying
|
William Shakespeare |
815cab8
|
"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."
|
|
lying
|
Megan Whalen Turner |
6358d49
|
Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying
|
|
lying
secrets
|
Holly Black |
ad8dfe4
|
"Isana laughed. "And you, lady? Are you a woman of conscience or of ambition?" The lady smiled. "That's a question rarely asked here at court." "And why is that?" "Because a woman of conscience would tell you that she is a person of conscience. A woman of ambition would tell you that she is a person of conscience--only much more convincingly." --
|
|
lying
convincing
court
conscience
|
Jim Butcher |
54e3449
|
I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins? Are you going to say to his face what you think? Well, tell me!' His brother was silent and Edward went on: 'If you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, only what you really thought, you would enter into a serious conversation with a madman and you yourself would become mad. And it is the same way with the world that surrounds us. If I obstinately told a man the truth to his face, it would mean I was taking him seriously. And to take something so unimportant seriously means to become less than serious oneself. I, you see, lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become one of them myself.
|
|
virtue
lying
lies
truth
|
Milan Kundera |
f8a5db4
|
It's not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth -- but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it...but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.
|
|
lying
lies
truth
omissions
half-truths
|
Robert A. Heinlein |
acc76eb
|
Once you take to the habit of deception, every new lie comes that much easier. Though to me it wasn't so much lies as a matter of judicious editing. We all inevitably present a version of ourselves that is a collection of half-truths and exclusions. The way I saw it, the truth was too complicated, whereas the well-chosen lie would put everyone's mind at ease.
|
|
lying
lies
half-truths
public-image
|
Caroline Kettlewell |
2bb7d18
|
Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.
|
|
lying
lies
honesty
truth
lie
stories
|
Marisha Pessl |
ae8c21e
|
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.
|
|
lying
|
Chuck Klosterman |
cd75d0c
|
There's a tipping point with lies, a point where you've said something so many times that it feels truer than the truth.
|
|
lying
lies
|
Holly Black |
03735c9
|
"You could still be lying," says the Roach. He turns to Cardan. "Try her." "Your pardon?" Cardan says, drawing himself up, and the Roach seems to suddenly remember to whom he's speaking in such an offhanded way. "Don't be such a prickly rose, Your Majesty," the Roach says with a shrug and a grin. "I'm not giving you an order. I'm suggesting that if you tried to glamour Jude, we could find out the truth." Cardan sighs and walks toward me. I know this is necessary. I know that he doesn't intend to hurt me. I know he can't glamour me. And yet I draw back automatically. "Jude?" he asks. "Go ahead," I say. I hear the glamour enter his voice, heady and seductive and more powerful than I expected. "Crawl to me," he says with a grin. Embarrassment pinks my cheeks. I stay where I am, looking at all their faces. "Satisfied?" The Bomb nods. "You're not charmed."
|
|
lying
glamour
|
Holly Black |
e2ecf12
|
"Ralon didn't make anyone else put his tack away?" Alex wanted to know. "You didn't see anything strange?" Alanna didn't look up. "No." , she excused her lie mentally. "
|
|
lying
ralon
bully
strange
|
Tamora Pierce |
aefb41a
|
Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication--in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.
|
|
lying
|
Rachel Cohn |
b854f0b
|
"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."
|
|
lying
forgiving-the-past
|
William Faulkner |
36b54c2
|
Let every writer tell his own lies That's freedom of the press.
|
|
lying
lies
truth
freedom-of-the-press
the-news
news
|
Norman Mailer |
688e1d1
|
She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information.
|
|
disclosure
lying
truth
information
questions-and-answers
facts
questions
|
Alexander McCall Smith |
a4afaf9
|
I swear to you, by my own stunning good looks and towering ego, that I am not lying to you.
|
|
lying
truth
thomas-raith
|
Jim Butcher |
a7e20e7
|
Writers of fiction embellish reality almost without knowing it.
|
|
lying
lies
writing
writers
|
Aljean Harmetz |
94afddb
|
Lying is a defiance of the truth. Bullshitting is a wholesale dismissal of the truth.
|
|
lying
truth
|
Brené Brown |
bea78d3
|
Without language, they have no lies. Thus they have no future.
|
|
lying
philosophy
truth
thought-provoking
|
Ursula K. Le Guin |
1dfb2e3
|
Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to almost never shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the point of view of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed.
|
|
lying
truthfulness
|
Sam Harris |
444fb2c
|
The first rule in life is 'everybody lies.' Remember that and you'll get a lot further.
|
|
lying
lies
life
rule
cynical
rules
|
Jennifer Crusie |
1d18db9
|
Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.
|
|
lying
rationalization
hypocrisy
|
Saul Bellow |
da75eb2
|
The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.
|
|
lying
love-for-country
nationalism
dignity
rights
patriotism
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
698dddd
|
I don't think anybody'd remember and certainly do know everybody'd lie. The reason I'm so bitter and, as I said, 'in anguish,' nowadays, or one of the reasons, is that everybody's begun to lie and because they lie they assume that I lie too: they overlook the fact that I remember very well many things (of course I've forgotten some...) I do believe that lying is a sin, unless it's innocent lie based on lack of memory, certainly the giving of false evidence and being a false witness is a mortal sin, but what I mean is, insofar as lying has become so prevalent in the world today (thanks to Marxian Dialectical propaganda and Comitern techniques among other causes) that, when a man tells the truth, everybody, looking in the mirror and seeing a liar... ...like those LSD heads in newspaper photographs who sit in parks gazing rapturously at the sky to show how high they are when they're only victims momentarily of a contraction of the blood vessels and nerves in the brain that causes the illusion...
|
|
lying
illusion
truth
marxian-dialectical-propaganda
lsd
lie
sin
|
Jack Kerouac |
10bc4a6
|
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.
|
|
lying
queer-youth
|
Bob Smith |
b661bf7
|
"She lied to me today," Archie said. "A teenager?" Susan said with faux surprise. "Lying to an authority figure? Impossible."
|
|
lying
teenager
|
Chelsea Cain |
e9fd48c
|
...when the public nerve is aroused, the most impressive capacity of man is his skill for lying.
|
|
lying
the-lacuna
media
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
962cbc4
|
Above all, avoid lying, especially lying to yourself. Keep watching out for your lies, watch for them every hour, every minute. Also avoid disgust, both for others and yourself: whatever strikes you as disgusting within yourself is cleansed by the mere fact that you notice it. Avoid fear, too, although fear is really only a consequence of lies. Never be afraid of your petty selfishness when you try to achieve love and don't be too alarmed if you act badly on occasion.
|
|
lying
lies
fear
love
self-love
disgust
selfishness
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
35be911
|
Oh my God, I am such a liar. And I can't even leave it at just one lie, either. Oh, no. I have to pile it on. I am sick, I tell you. Sick.
|
|
lying
ninth-key
susannah-simon
suze-simon
the-mediator
|
Meg Cabot |
6b6435f
|
Mitch's take on humanity had deteriorated to the point where he assumed someone was lying if her lips were moving.
|
|
lying
lies
humanity
cynical
lips
|
Jennifer Crusie |
b5870fe
|
Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface. Are you in an abusive relationship? A refusal to lie to others - How did you get that bruise? - would oblige you to come to grips with this situation very quickly. Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol? Lying is the lifeblood of addiction. If we have no recourse to lies, our lives can unravel only so far without others noticing. Telling the truth can also reveal ways in which we want to grow but haven't.
|
|
lying
lies
integrity
honesty
transparency
growth
mental-health
|
Sam Harris |
41054e9
|
I love it when people lie! Lying is only man's privilege over all other organisms. Lying is what makes me a man.
|
|
lying
truth
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
fc17b77
|
I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- frankness on the part of our politicians, our friends, our loves, ourselves. No more liars in public places. (And the bed and the bar are, in their way, as public as the floor of Congress.)
|
|
lying
war
politics
|
Tim O'Brien |
2669b2b
|
I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar.
|
|
lying
lies
|
Roger Zelazny |
cd6800f
|
They have lied to us. They can't keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death. A cooperative structure of lies. What have they ever given us in return for the trust, the love--They actually say 'love'--we're supposed to owe Them? Can They keep us from even catching cold? from lice, from being alone? from anything? Before the Rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to. But the Rocket can penetrate, from the sky, at any given point. Nowhere is safe. We can't believe Them any more. Not if we are still sane, and love the truth.
|
|
lying
religion
love
truth
futility-of-war
|
Thomas Pynchon |
a1200ce
|
The truth is often a big, scary wall, no less massive and haunting even after you find a way around it.
|
|
lying
true
truth
|
Sean Patrick Brennan |
e027976
|
Sally felt herself getting in the mood to tell some really great lies. It was a special feeling of power.
|
|
lying
lies
sally-wilcox
the-wishing-stone
spooksville
|
Christopher Pike |