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Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A recent study found that people lie more when they are texting. Yeah, especially that one lie: "Sorry, just got your text!"
JIMMY FALLON, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Feb. 7, 2012
He who clips away a little truth, and puts in a patch of falsehood to make measure, is likely to become a skilful manufacturer of lies.
JOHN THORNTON, Maxims and Directions for Youth
Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characteristics
Lying is a sin destructive to society; for there is no trade where there is no trust, and there is no trust where there is no truth.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
Sometimes you can learn things from the way a person denies something. The choice of lies can be almost as helpful as the truth.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON, Guilty Pleasures
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Those that think it permissible to tell a white lie soon grow color-blind.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Lies are like sleeping pills. You should only use them when you absolutely have to. They spoil everything if you make a habit of them.
Lies don't fix things. They don't even make things easier, at least not in the long run. Best to tell the truth and then clean up an honest mess.
P.C. CAST & KRISTIN CAST, Chosen
There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
For the wretched conceit of a liar, in supposing himself clever enough to invent stories so ingenious that they shall, for any time, impose on people for the truth, and the still grosser folly in imagining, as he must do, that the world will, without investigation and analysis, take for granted anything he chooses to assert--that world more shrewd, more cunning, and as prying as himself--what a conceited ass must the liar be! How superior over others in cunning must he not believe himself! What fools must he not suppose the rest of mankind!
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
A liar is a man who does now know how to deceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools: he who knows how to make skilful use of the truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone pride himself in cleverness.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
Some liars are so expert they deceive themselves.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes--never!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV, The Master and Margarita
Did their conceit not blind them, neither men nor women, who habitually invent lies or garble the truth, could hope to be long undetected; for people meet who know them, talk over these statements, and soon ferret out the naked truth; and a few exposures will render its perverters objects of suspicion for the remainder of their lives.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time--and then shut up.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger in a Strange Land
All men must acknowledge Lying to be one of the most scandalous sins, that can be committed between man and man; a crime of a deep dye, and of an extensive nature, leading into innumerable sins; for Lying is practiced to deceive, to injure, betray, rob, destroy, and the like; Lying in this sense is the concealing of all other crimes, the sheep's clothing upon the wolf's back, the Pharisee's prayer, the harlot's blush, the hypocrite's paint, and Judas's kiss; in a word, it is mankind's darling sin, and the Devil's distinguished characteristic.
WELLINS CALCOTT, Thoughts Moral and Divine
It was easier to lie with a gesture than a word.
SAMUEL R. DELANY, Babel-17
Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON, Guilty Pleasures
If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth.
FRANK HERBERT, God Emperor of Dune
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
To lie, of course, is to engender insanity.
ANAIS NIN, Henry and June
Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.
If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.
J. D. SALINGER, "Seymour: An Introduction"
Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Harkonnen
It was so useful to lie with the truth.
TANITH LEE, The Silver Metal Lover
I'm a very firm believer that a liar is a cheat and a thief and a crook. I don't like liars. I never lie. I always told my own child, "If you murder somebody, tell me. I'll help you hide the body. But don't you lie to me."
LEONA HELMSLEY, Playboy, Nov. 1990
Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to. I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.
TIM ALLEN, attributed, Land Your Dream Job
They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.
WILLIAM FAULKNER, Light in August
Truthful lips endure forever, the lying tongue, for only a moment.
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
CESARE PAVESE, This Business of Living, Jan. 8, 1938
The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
V. S. NAIPAUL, In a Free State
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