Quotessence
Home / Topics / Betrayal Quotes

Betrayal Quotes

Browse 1899 quotes about Betrayal.

Related topics

Betrayal Quotes

“When Radha and I were children, we used to play a game. She would ask, “What is the true color of the world, Didi?” And I would say, “Green.” “Why green?” “Because the trees are green. Grass is green. The new buds on the plants are green. Even the parrots are green. Green is the color of the world.” “But, Didi,” Radha would argue, “the wheat stalks are brown. My body is brown. The field mice are brown. No, the world is brown.” “What about blue?” I would say. “The sky is blue. And it covers the whole world, like a mother who loves and embraces all her children. Radha would fall silent, and I would remember that she had known our mother’s love for even fewer years than I did. So I would take her in my arms and hold her, to make her know what it feels like to be loved. Today I know the truth: The true color of the world is black. Anger is black. Shame and scandal are black. Betrayal is black. Hatred is black. And a roasted, smoking body is Black, Black, Black. The world, after witnessing such cruelty, goes black. The waking up to a changed world is black.”

“In my novel 'Panther in the Basement,' I retold the experiences that revealed to me, as a child, that sometimes there are two sides to a story, that conflicts are colored not only in black and white. In the last year of the British Mandate, when I was about eight, I befriended a British policeman who spoke ancient Hebrew and had memorized most of the Bible. He was a fat, asthmatic, emotional man, and perhaps a slightly muddled one, who fervently believed that the Jewish people's return to its ancestral land heralded redemption for the world at large. When the other children discovered my friendship with this man, they called me a traitor. Much later, I learned to take comfort in the thought that, for fanatic, a traitor is anyone who dares to change. Fanatics of all kinds, in all places at all times, loathe and fear change, suspecting that it is nothing less than a betrayal resulting from dark, base motives.”

“Like the moon shining bright Up high with all its grace, I can only show you at night And hide half of my face.”

“Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn’t quite recognize”, Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the Guardian, and then didn't attend it because I wanted to be on television instead. This is easy: Martin had asked to use the fine lobby of my building for a farewell bash, and I'd set it up. People have quite often asked me to do that. My wife did the honors after Nightline told me that I’d have to come to New York if I wanted to abuse Mother Teresa and Princess Diana on the same show. Of all the people I know, Martin Walker and Sidney Blumenthal would have been the top two in recognizing that journalism and argument come first, and that there can be no hard feelings about it. How do I know this? Well, I have known Martin since Oxford. (He produced a book on Clinton, published in America as 'The President We Deserve'. He reprinted it in London, under the title, 'The President They Deserve'. I doffed my hat to that.) While Sidney—I can barely believe I am telling you this—once also solicited an invitation to hold his book party at my home. A few days later he called me back, to tell me that Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic, had insisted on giving the party instead. I said, fine, no bones broken; no caterers ordered as yet. 'I don't think you quite get it,' he went on, after an honorable pause. 'That means you can't come to the party at all.' I knew that about my old foe Peretz: I didn't then know I knew it about Blumenthal. I also thought that it was just within the limit of the rules. I ask you to believe that I had buried this memory until this book came out, but also to believe that I won't be slandered and won't refrain—if motives or conduct are in question—from speculating about them in my turn.”

“The line between friends and enemies is usually very thin. In a realm where the delicate dance between love and infatuation often blurs and reasoning grapples with the tides of emotion, *a man must become a blacksmith of his own soul.* He Must wield his reasoning as a hammer to forge his emotions, upon the anvil of self-awareness. Each strike of the brain-hammer reverberates with clarity, tempering the heart’s wild impulses, separating the enduring glow of love from the fleeting flicker of infatuation. Sparks of illusion scatter while the tongs of introspection hold the heart steady, ensuring that only genuine emotion is shaped by the steady hand of reason in this crucible of inner truth”

“The line between true love and infatuation is usually very thin. In a realm where the delicate dance between the two often blurs and reasoning grapples with the tides of emotion, a man must become a blacksmith of his own soul. He Must wield his reasoning as a hammer to forge his emotions, upon the anvil of self-awareness. Each strike of the brain-hammer reverberates with clarity, tempering the heart’s wild impulses, separating the enduring glow of love from the fleeting flicker of infatuation. Sparks of illusion scatter while the tongs of introspection hold the heart steady, ensuring that only genuine emotion is shaped by the steady hand of reason in this crucible of inner truth”

“It wasn’t heartbreak. It wasn’t betrayal. It was the slow death of something that could’ve mattered, if the world hadn’t gotten to him first.”

“The Last Love’s Dance In the tender weave of adulting, friendships softly fade. To part from you is not pride’s cold decree Your absence carves a canyon in my fragile heart’s terrain. Yet, I choose to release you, though my soul aches, no throne of pride, For self-care demands this quiet, piercing break. My waning love, a tender gift, I offer to those who hold me near, Who mend my festering wounds with care. My last tears, like rivers etched from the shattered dreams of youth, Will fall with those who weep within my sorrow’s embrace.”

“It would have been too melodramatic, too final, to say that after this JB was forever diminished for him. But it was true that for the first time, he was able to comprehend that the people he had grown to trust might someday betray him anyway, and that as disappointing as it might be, it was inevitable as well, and that life would keep propelling him steadily forward, because for everyone who might fail him in some way, there was at least one person who never would.”

“When I say I loved Anthony, I don't mean this beautifully pleasant, supportive togetherness, laughing and being there for each other, helping each other through all the hardships of life like in the movies. I mean love the way two dysfunctional street kids running amok in Hollywood loved. Inseparable, down to party, ultimately having each other's backs, but hurtful to each other. Betrayal, fear, passive-aggressive emotional blackmail. I have never felt more hurt by anybody than Anthony, and we have spent huge swaths of our friendship in states of distrust and anger. Is that what having a brother is like? It's what I know.”

“I felt convinced that however it might have been in former times, in the present stage of the world, no man's faculties could be developed, no man's moral principle be enlarged and liberal, without an extensive acquaintance with books. to me they stood in the place of an active career, of ambition, and those palpable excitements necessary to the multitude. The collation of philosophical opinions, the study of historical facts, the acquirement of languages, were at once my recreation, and the serious aim of my life.”

“May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

“You had hoped in love. You had believed in its existence. Its goodness. The richness of a life bathed in it. You went in search of it. Hoping. Longing. Risking. Trusting. And at some point you found love, or what you thought was love. And you gladly immersed yourself in it. Freely. Joyfully. With the whole of your being. And then at some point, it turned. Violently. Wickedly. It did what loves doesn’t do, or least what it’s not supposed to do. It used you. Betrayed you. Wounded you. And then it cast you off to some cold isolated place to somehow bear your pain in the worst kind of loneliness imaginable. And in those places we are left with the bitter feeling that love was a grand hoax. A childish hope. An antiquated myth set on wounding those who fall prey to its seductive promises. But I would tell you to never let those who abuse love define it through their abuse of it. To the contrary, there is something pristine and untouchable about love. Something transformational. Life-altering. Life-giving. Yes, people abuse it. But when a single human being sets the whole of themselves aside in order to freely love another, magic is set in motion. And it is my prayer that the hope of the love that you have always longed for will never be crushed by those who have crushed you. Rather, may you believe, may you wait, may you hold hope close, and may you be blessed when the love that you thought not to exist unexpectedly seizes your heart, rubs your soul warm, and ignites your life. This is what I wish for you.”