Browse 12355 quotes about Lying.
“My dear, be a good man be virtuous be religious be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here. ...God bless you all.”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Sir Walter Scott: Chronicles of the Canongate, The Keepsake Stories, The Highland Widow, The Tapestried Chamber, Halidon Hill, Auchindrane and many more: From the Great Scottish Writer, Author of Waverly, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, The Pirate, Old Mortality, The Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Anne of Geierstein, The Betrothed and The Talisman
“Oh the grave!--the grave!--It buries every error--covers every defect--extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)
“Some books are drenchèd sandsOn which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps,Like a wrecked argosy.”
Source: Poems
“One of the greatest dangers to peace lies in the economic pressure to which people find themselves subjected. One of the most practical things to be done in the world is to seek arrangements under which such pressure may be removed, so that opportunity may be renewed and hope may be revived.”
“Trust in thine own untried capacity As thou wouldst trust in God himself. Thy soul Is but an emanation from the whole. Thou dost not dream what forces lie in thee, Vast and unfathomed as the grandest sea.”
Source: Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)
“If fallacies come knocking at my door,I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score,Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt,And run the risk of barring one Truth out.And if pretension for a time deceive,And prove me one too ready to believe,Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act,I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.”
Source: Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)
“It's February the 22ndAnd I can't tell a lie.”
“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument, its function is to make the worse appear the better article. A confused competition of all propagandas -- those insults to human nature -- is carried on by the most expert psychological methods -- for instance, by always repeating a lie.”
Source: The Works of George Santayana
“Man's books are but man's alphabet,
Beyond and on his lessons lie -
The lessons of the violet,
The large gold letters of the sky;
The love of beauty, blossomed soil,
The large content, the tranquil toil:
The toil that nature ever taught,
The patient toil, the constant stir,
The toil of seas where shores are wrought,
The toil of Christ, the carpenter;
The toil of God incessantly
By palm-set land or frozen sea.”
“Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.”
Source: James Joyce: The Complete Novels (Book House)
“While I am compassed round With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief, Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes, She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day.”
Source: The Comedies, Tragedies, and Operas....: Now First Collected Together, and Corrected from the Roginals
“What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred Saturnians through life's Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed.”
Source: The Poems of Herman Melville
“In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.”
Source: Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition
“Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life: the voice of God that whispers to it: "You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet. and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you!”
Source: The Good News of God: Easyread Large Bold Edition
“Safety lies in silence. It is easier to rectify what you miss by silence, than to secure what you lose by speaking.”
“If a man is to become fully himself - and this is not something that happens automatically just because you arrive at a particular age - he is going to have to give up some things in the process. Be it drugs, infidelity, childishness, lying, fear of intimacy, violence - none of these things contribute to being a man”
“I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned.”
Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious
“In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time.”
Source: Recollections and private memoirs of Washington by his adopted son George Washington with a memoir of the author by his daughter; and illustrative and explanatory notes by Benson J. Loosing: With illustrations
“There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. The sternest comment that can be made against employers as a class lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and encouragement.”
Source: A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things: As Written
“Much of the beauty of Christmas lies in its challenge to look further, deeper, until we find its secret in the heart of God. But we never find that unless we look beyond the presents under the tree.”
Source: A Happy Trails Christmas
“The socially redeeming aspect of golf lies in the vast number of lawyers and bankers and managers who play it, and when you think of the damage they would do if they were at the job instead, you can see why golf courses are a wise investment for any municipality.”
“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones Forget not.”
Source: The Complete Poems
“Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale gessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.”
“What honour that, But tedious waste of time, to sit and hear So many hollow compliments and lies.”
Source: The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office
“When lying to someone, look him straight in the eye.”
“Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.”
Source: The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
“There is no comfort looking forth nor back, The present gives the lie to all her past.”
Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings
“A false tale often betrays itself.”
Source: Aesop's fables
“How shall we ever make the world intelligent of our movement? I do not think that the answer lies in trying to render feminism easy, popular, and instantly gratifying. To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.”
Source: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
“The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents' memories on special occasions perhaps-no casual storytelling jogged by daily life, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence.”
Source: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
“To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion
“Whatever it is that occurs at death, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don't die. The cessation of the body is an illusion, and like a magician sweeping aside a curtain, the soul reveals what lies beyond.”
“There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.”
Source: The Folklore of Discworld
“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.”
“He [Bogie] had tremendous character and a great sense of honor and would not tolerate lies, even if they asked him what he thought of a movie. We were once at a screening at somebody's house, I forget whose, and they ran a movie that he was in, that he never thought much of. Afterward, the producer asked what he thought of it, and Bogie said "I think it's a crock." And this producer was horrified! He was about to release the movie, and he said to Bogie "Why would you say that?!" Bogie shrugged and said "Then don't ask me." He never played the schmoozing game. He was not into that at all.”
“They say that the truth will set you free But then again, so will a lie... It depends if you're trying to get to the promised land Or if you're just trying to get by.”
“Though I never scruple a lie to serve my Master, it hurts one's conscience to be found out!”
Source: The Rivals: A Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent-Garden
“The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.”
Source: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
“A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.”
“A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.”
Source: The collected plays
“Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled.”
“It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.”
Source: The Theatre of Tennessee Williams
“Do not lie to the Scholar.”
Source: The subtle knife
“Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!”
Source: The Left Hand of Darkness
“Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.”
Source: The Left Hand of Darkness
“I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.”
Source: The Other Wind
“Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be.”
Source: Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions
“We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God's truth, the universe at once began to exist.”
Source: Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume--Rocannon's World; Planet of Exile; City of Illusions
“Riches are but a means, or instrument; and the virtue of an instrument lies in its use.”
Source: Moral and religious aphorisms collected from the manuscript papers of the reverend and learned Doctor Whichcote; and published in 1703, by Dr. Jeffery. Now re-published, with very large additions, ... by Samuel Salter, ... To which are added, Eight letter