Quotes about lies-and-lying

Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.

— Joseph Addison

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

— Conte Di Vittorio Alfieri

The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.

— Minna Antrim

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

— Aristotle

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

— Robert Armstrong

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

— Francis Bacon

Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it

— Lyman Beecher

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.

— Hilaire Belloc

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!

— Georges Bernanos

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.

— Elizabeth Bowen

Never to lie is to have no lock to your door, you are never wholly alone.

— Elizabeth Bowen

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.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Samuel Butler

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

— Samuel Butler

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

— Samuel Butler

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Lord Byron

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

— Elias Canetti

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

— Winston Churchill

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

— Marcus T. Cicero

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

— Jean Cocteau

A liar is full of oaths.

— Pierre Corneille

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically -- for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist -- but then what isn t?

— Quentin Crisp

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

— Aleister Crowley

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

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

— Norman Douglas

A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.

— Finley Peter Dunne

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Liars are the cause of all the sins and crimes in the world.

— Epictetus

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

— Evans

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

— William Feather

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

— Anatole France

Lying rides upon debt's back.

— Benjamin Franklin

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.

— Billy Boy Franklin

The middle of the road is where the white line is -- and that's the worst place to drive.

— Robert Frost

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.

— Graham Greene

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

— Graham Greene

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

— Alexander Haig

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

— Eric Hoffer

I detest the man who hides one thing in the depth of his heart and speaks forth another.

— Homer

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.

— Thomas Jefferson

By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man.

— Immanuel Kant

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.

— Abraham Lincoln

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.

— Clare Boothe Luce

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

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

— William Mcilvanney

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

— H. L. Mencken

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.

— H. L. Mencken

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.

— Merlin

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

— Henry Miller

If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.

— A. A. Milne

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.

— Ceslaw Milosz

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.

— C. E. Montague

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

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The lie is a condition of life.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Friedrich Nietzsche

If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody.

— Leroy ''Satchel'' Paige

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

— Phaedrus

To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.

— Plato

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

— Marcel Proust

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.

— Marcel Proust

They say is often a great liar.

— Proverb

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

— Arabian Proverb

Great talker, great liar.

— French Proverb

With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.

— Russian Proverb

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.

— Helen Rowland

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

— John Ruskin

Lies are usually caused by undue fear of men.

— Hasidic Saying

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

— George Bernard Shaw

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

— William Shenstone

Liars need to have good memories.

— Algernon Sidney

All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

— Paul Simon

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

— Logan Pearsall Smith

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

— Steven Soderbergh

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Truth will lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none.

— Bishop Robert South

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

— Larry Speakes

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

— George Steiner

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.

— John Sterling

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.

— I. F. Stone

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

— Publilius Syrus

Don't lie if you don't have to.

— Leo Szilard

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

— The Talmud

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

— Margaret Thatcher

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

— Angela Thirkell

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

— James Thurber

If you do not wish to be lied to, do not ask questions. If there were no questions, there would be no lies.

— B. Traven

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

— Mark Twain

A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain

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

— Mark Twain