Popular quotes about Lying! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 47
The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.' 'Do I look like a liar?' 'You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into her words there crept unawares a touch of the old anxiety, because she really did believe that her young man enjoyed lying to women.
Milan KunderaThe secret to getting away with lying, is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself even more so than lying to another.
Elizabeth BearWhatever is born is the work of God. So whatever is plastered on, is the devil's work.... How unworthy of the Christian name it is to wear a fictitious face - you on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined! You, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful, are lying in appearance.
TertullianA man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.
Fyodor DostoevskyLying is too much trouble. You have to make sure to taste each word before letting it off your tongue. I hate that. It's hard enough making people understand without lying.
Jonathan CarrollI have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.
Samuel JohnsonLying 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 HarrisYou only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live.
Barbara Brown TaylorBwenawa brought my attention to two wooden planks raised about four feet above the ground. On the ledges were lagoon fish sliced open and lying in the sun, the carcasses just visible through an enveloping blizzard of flies. "You see, " said Bwenawa. "The water dries in the sun, leaving the salt. It's kang-kang [tasty]. We call it salt fish." "Ah," I said. "In my country we call it rotten fish.
J. Maarten TroostI think that more so, my wonderful skill of dissociation came in very handy. I care very much what other people think. I'm a total pleaser. I want everyone to like me all the time. I feel like people who don't feel that way on some level are lying, but particularly female memoirists. We want to be seen and we want to be forgiven. So that occurred to me very early on.
Melissa FebosIt's hard to give a dramatic shape to even the most dramatic life. . . . you are forced not just into selectivity, but into alteration, distortion and outright lying about what did and didn't happen.
James TobackWhen you're writing a book that is going to be a narrative with characters and events, you're walking very close to fiction, since you're using some of the methods of fiction writing. You're lying, but some of the details may well come from your general recollection rather than from the particular scene. In the end it comes down to the readers. If they believe you, you're OK. A memoirist is really like any other con man; if he's convincing, he's home. If he isn't, it doesn't really matter whether it happened, he hasn't succeeded in making it feel convincing.
Samuel HynesGod cannot be referred to as 'good,' 'better,' or 'best' because He is above all things. If a man says that God is wise, the man is lying because anything that is wise can become wiser. Anything that a man might say about God is incorrect... The best a man can do is to remain silent...The true master knows that if he had a God he could understand, he would never hold Him to be God.
Andrew DavidsonMost times we only see things for the way we are. But we're good at lying to ourselves. Sometimes we need somebody who's not living in our skin to point out how things really are.
Charles de LintIn my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.
PetrarchTruth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself
Louis-Ferdinand CelineMy own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
Anton ChekhovLyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isnโt enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where thatโs not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.
Philip PullmanId be lying if I said Hollywood wasnt still an ambition; its everyones, isnt it? Youre getting paid very well, youre working with great actors and great directors - who wouldnt want to be a part of that? But its not going to break my heart if it doesnt happen. This business is about doing good work rather than how famous it makes you.
Max BeesleyThe three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.
Shannon HaleThere she is, lying in front of me, smoking a cigarette, thinking of something or someone else. And thatโs how she is stuck in my mind forever. We are two explorers in the dark. Mapless and hopeless. Alone together.
Pete WentzPerhaps one day we will do โeverything that we can to protect our people and the timeless values that we stand for.โ But today, we wonโt even honestly describe the motivations of our enemies. And in the act of lying to ourselves, we continue to pay lip service to the very delusions that empower them.
Sam HarrisIt is a rule of mine never to ask unsolicited questions of people over twenty-one. I am only giving them the option of lying if they choose to. They would tell me the truth without my asking if they wanted me to know. To me that's fair enough.
Dorothy WestWhat makes it difficult for people trying to follow a dream is that the whole time you feel like you're slamming your head against the wall. So it's nice to make a breakthrough and not kind of lying there with your head bleeding.
Lewis BlackI was lying in bed this morning and saying to myself, 'the remarkable thing about Ethel is her stupendous self-satisfaction' when in came your letter to confirm this profound psychological observation. How delighted I was!
Virginia WoolfThere never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.
Joseph Story...there is the sheer emotional, intellectual, physical, chemical pleasure of your children. The honest truth is that the world holds no greater gratification than lying in bed with your children, putting your leg on top of them in a semi-crushing manner, while saying sternly, "You are a poo.
Caitlin MoranOne has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.
Vladimir PutinWhatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
Adrienne RichIf [Respulicans] can't get rid of [Obamacare], they're going to have to tell their base, we've been lying to you for the last five years. So they're willing to go to almost any extent to do that. That's unusual, in fact I think it's unique in the history of modern parliamentary systems. And it's very dangerous for the country and for the world.
Noam ChomskyHad you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our Thoughts, and Notions, had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hotentots that inhabit there: And had the Virginia King Apochancana, been educated in England, he had, perhaps been as knowing a Divine, and as good a Mathematician as any in it. The difference between him, and a more improved English-man, lying barely in this, That the exercise of his Facilities was bounded within the Ways, Modes, and Notions of his own Country, and never directed to any other or farther Enquiries.
John LockeCome then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other.
HomerHer name rang in Will's mind like the chime of a bell; he wondered if any other name on earth had such an inescapable resonance to it. She couldn't have been named something awful, could she, like Mildred. He couldn't imagine lying awake at night, staring up at the ceiling while invisible voices whispered 'Mildred' in his ears. But Tessa--
Cassandra ClareWriting is really wonderful art. A lot of this is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that's our job as writers is to just notice them and bring them to life.
George CarlinThough Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to.
Cassandra ClareOne always has the air of someone who is lying when one speaks to a policeman.
Charles-Louis PhilippeI had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
Charles Dickens