Popular quotes about Lie! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 58
Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie? I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth; the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. . . . Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.
William ShakespeareIf you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.
David MametIf you are ever going to lie, you go to jail for the lie rather than the crime. So believe me, don't ever lie.
Richard M. NixonI always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.
William SaroyanI sometimes lie, especially about personal things, because what does it matter? I am a kind of minute commodity. My name is no longer my own. I try to lie as much as I can when I’m interviewed. It’s reverse psychology. I figure if you lie, they’ll print the truth.
River PhoenixWhat I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.
Lady GagaPlato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?
Margaret AtwoodOnce you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing.
Ernest BeckerI'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.
Henrik IbsenMy idea of the perfect exercise class is this: The teacher gives us all a hug and goes, “You did it! You showed up! Let’s lie down.” We all lie down and she’s like, “How is everybody feeling?” We’re like, “Great!” And the teacher’s like, “Great!” Then we all get to leave 20 minutes early.
Amy PoehlerUnder the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree.
George OrwellLie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. Let mouth and heart be one; beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.
George HerbertA friend once said, and I found to be true,That everyday people, they lie to God too,So what makes you think, that they won't lie to you.
Lauryn HillBeloved, whatever we are gripping to bring us satisfaction is a lie-unless it is Christ. He is the Truth that sets us free. If you are holding anything in your craving for satisfaction right now, would you be willing to acknowledge it as a lie? Even if you feel you can't let go of it right this moment, would you lift it before Him-perhaps literally lifting your fisted hand as a symbol-and confess it as an idol? God does not condemn you. He calls you.
Beth MooreAnd if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
George OrwellI get paid to lie to people as an actor. Country music is the one area that I don't lie. I tell the truth.
Christian KaneIf people become accustomed to lying, they will unconsciously commit every possible wrong deed. Before they can act wickedly, they must lie and once they begin to lie they will act wickedly without concern.
Gautama BuddhaWe laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?
Friedrich NietzscheWe assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.
Adrienne RichPeople are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
James BovardPeople think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
Ayn RandIt would much conduce to the settlement of your hearts, to consider, That by fretting and discontent, you do yourselves more injury thart till the afsltilions you lie under could do; your own discontent is that which arms your troubles with a sting; it is you that make your burden heavy, by struggling under it. Could you but lie quiet under the hand of God, your condition would be much easier and sweeter than it is.
John FlavelThere Is No Terrorist Threat In This Country. This Is A Lie. This Is The Biggest Lie We've Been Told.
Michael MooreBut I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it's a lie and they're protected if the person's famous or it's a company.
Steve WozniakIt was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert EinsteinNow, I know from experience that the trouble with one lie is that it usually takes more lies to cover it up. And if you don't watch out, you wind up telling lies to cover up the lies that are covering up the original lie.
Wendelin Van DraanenHow many hopes and dreams are trapped within these bones? How many wonders lie never to be discovered? This is what war is. Desolation, despair and loss. There are no victors.
David GemmellYou better change your ways / And get really wild. / I want to tell you something / I wouldn't tell you no lie. / Wild women are the only kind / That really get by, / 'Cause Wild Women don't worry / Wild Women don't get the blues.
Ida CoxI didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.
Sylvia PlathI pounded through the houses, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep. But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song.
Francesca Lia BlockTick, tock,” whispers Wiress. I guide her in front of me and get her to lie down, stroking her arm to soothe her. She drifts off, stirring restlessly, occasionally sighing out her phrase. “Tick, tock.” “Tick, tock,” I agree softly. “It’s time for bed. Tick, tock. Go to sleep.
Suzanne CollinsThe man in between waits between the two, not hearing the lie and not seeing the true. Unknowing what is and denying what seems, and there he will sleep, the man in between.
Neil DiamondI’m going to lie this one right on the line, right here, right now: I’m pro big pants. Strident feminism NEEDS big pants. Really big. I’m currently wearing a pair that could have been used as a fire blanket to put out the Great Fire of London at any point during the first 48 hours or so. They extend from the top of my thigh to my belly button, and effectively double up as a second property that I can escape to at weekends. If I were going to run for parliament, it would be solely on a platform of ‘Get Women In Massive Grundie’s’.
Caitlin MoranLying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.
Sam HarrisWhen I lie this close to you, when I smell your scent, when I hear your voice, I know everything that matters." She looked down the length of him. "You are the male I want to mate with. That's who you are.
J.R. WardShe said she married an architect, who kept her warm and safe and dry. She would like to say she loved the man, but she didn't like to lie.
Dan FogelbergTo the fuki plant, dandelions, and their kind that lie for long patiently under the fallen snow, comes the season of breezy spring. No sooner do they see the light of the world, stretching their longing heads out from the cracks in the snow, than they are instantly nipped off. For these plants isn't the sorrow as deep as that of the child's parents whose child had accidentally died? They say everything in the plant and tree kingdom attains Buddhahood. Then they, too, must have Buddha-nature.
Kobayashi IssaAll the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and...however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.
David HumeIf rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie.
Barry S. StraussThe roots of effective leadership lie in simple things, one of which is listening. Listening to someone demonstrates respect; it shows that you value their ideas and are willing to hear them.
John BaldoniPoliticians study hard and work diligently their entire lives to be able to stand in front of a national audience and lie through their teeth.
Gregor CollinsCome not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.
Alfred Lord TennysonThe reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart.
John Jay Chapman