Lies / Lying / Liars - Quotes

A concealed truth, that's all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered. - Josephine Hart

A good man will not lie, although it be for his profit. - Cicero

A good memory is needed once we have lied. - Pierre Corneille

A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A great lie is like a great fish on dry land; it may fret and fling, and make a frightful bother, but it cannot hurt you; you have only to keep still and it will die of itself. - George Crabbe

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood. - William Shenstone

A liar is always lavish of oaths. - Pierre Corneille

A liar should have a good memory. - Quintilian

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth. - Aesop

A lie ... is often the mirror image of the truth; by examining it carefully, you can reconstruct the fact that lie was designed to conceal. - K. J. Parker

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. - Mark Twain

A lie has no legs, and cannot stand; but it has wings, and can fly far and wide. - Chinese Proverb

A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all. - Henry Ward Beecher

A lie is like a cat: You need to stop it before it gets out the door or it’s really hard to catch. - Charles M. Blow

A lie is like a snow-ball; the longer it is rolled, the larger it is. - Martin Luther

A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future. - Croft M. Pentz

A lie never lives to be old. - Sophocles

A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found; I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me. - T. Carlyle

A lie stands on one leg, truth on two. - Benjamin Franklin

A lie told often enough becomes the truth. - Vladimir Lenin

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. - Charles Edward Montague

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous. - Alfred Adler

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar. - Mark Twain

A single lie can make all your truths questionable. - Unknown

A single lie discovered is enough to create doubt in every truth expressed. - Unknown

A small lie, if it actually is a lie, condemns a man as much as a big and black falsehood. If a man will deliberately cheat to the amount of a single cent, give him opportunity and he would cheat to any amount. - E. H. Chapin

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All kinds of wickedness proceed from lying, as all goodness doth proceed from truth. - Chilo

All lies, white or black, disgrace a gentleman, although I grant there is a difference: to say the least of it, it is a dangerous habit, for white lies are but the gentleman ushers to black ones. - Frederick Marryat

An equivocation is nearly related to a lie. It is an intention to deceive under words of a double meaning, or words which, literally speaking, are true; and is equally criminal with the most downright breach of truth. A nod or a sign may convey a lie as effectually as the most deceitful language. - W. Gilpin

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood. - Aldous Huxley

And he that does one fault at first, and lies to hide it, makes it two. - Isaac Watts

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well. - Samuel Butler

As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood. - Oliver Goldsmith

As the snow before the sun, even so is a polished lie before the naked truth. - William Scott Downey

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs. - Oliver Goldsnith

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed. - John le Carre

Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. - George Herbert

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

Don’t be quick to believe what you hear because lies spread quicker than the truth. - Unknown

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blameable. - Hosea Ballou

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. - Plato

Falsehood has a perennial spring. - Edmund Burke

For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have. - William Shakespeare

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

Hard truths can be dealt with, triumphed over, but lies will destroy your soul. - Patricia Briggs

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

He who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him. - Abraham Lincoln

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions. - Thomas Jefferson

He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one. - Alexander Pope

He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool. - William Shakespeare

If one cannot invent a really convincing lie, it is often better to stick to the truth. - Angela Thirkell

If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will. - J. D. Salinger

If you lie too often and get away with it, you will trap yourself in a world of self-deception. - Unknown

If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth. - Frank Herbert

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth. - Logan Smith

It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant. - Tennessee Williams

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country. - Alfred Adler

It is, perhaps, a debatable question, whether a person who has always been notoriously in the habit of lying, has a right to tell the truth; it is, of course, the only device by which he can deceive people. - George Denison Prentice

It was easier to lie with a gesture than a word. - Samuel R. Delany

Liars often set their own traps. - Aesop

Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies. - WM. Paul Young

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. - Daniel Quinn

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

Lies were like acid, corrosive: They could dissolve trust in a heartbeat. - Rob Thurman

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

Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts. - Claire Booth Luce 

Lying is a false significance of speech, with a will to deceive, which cannot be cured but by shame and reason; it is a monstrous and wicked evil, that filthily depraved and defileth the tongue of man. - John Jones

Lying is done with words, and also with silence. - Adrienne Rich

Lying is easy. But it's lonely. - Victoria Schwab

Lying is sometimes acted, insinuated, or implied, in a manner as injurious and shameful as when the falsehood is spoken outright. - Elias Lyman Magoon

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence. - Susan Sontag

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art. - Oscar Wilde

Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it. - Laurel K. Hamilton

Never argue with someone who believes their own lies. - Unknown

Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. - Lyman Beecher

Never lie to yourself. - Unknown

Never try to destroy someone else's life with a lie when yours can be destroyed with the truth. - Unknown

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. - Abraham Lincoln

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes. - Paulo Coelho

None speaks false, when there is none to hear. - James Beattie

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive! - Sir Walter Scott

On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art. - Isabel Fonseca

One lie must be thatched with another, or it will soon rain through. - John Owen

Only a lie that wasn't ashamed of itself could possibly succeed. - Isaac Asimov

Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths. - J. M. Coetzee

People will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. - Adolf Hitler

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge. - Cicero

Some liars are so expert they deceive themselves. - Austin O’Malley

Some lies are easier to believe than the truth. - Brian Herbert& Kevin J. Anderson

Some truth there was, but dash'd and brew'd with lies, to please the fools, and puzzle all the wise. - John Dryen  
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Sometimes you can learn things from the way a person denies something. The choice of lies can be almost as helpful as the truth.- Laurel K. Hamilton

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way. - Samuel Butler

The best lies are always at least partially true. - Laurel K. Hamilton

The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie. - Isaac Asimov

The essence of a lie is the intention to deceive. - M. Prideaux

The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed. - Baltasar Gracian

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he cannot be believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. - George Bernard Shaw

The lie that flatters I abhor the most. - William Cowper

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The most dangerous liars are those who think they are telling the truth. - Unknown

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of lie is a half-truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor. - Washington Allston

The most mischievous liars are those who keep on the verge of truth. - Eliza Cook

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves. - V. S. Naipaul

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

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. - Hannah Arendt

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool. - Stephen King

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort. - Katherine Dunn

The worst part about being lied to is knowing that you weren’t worth the truth. - Mishaela

There are some disguised falsehoods so like truths, that 'twould be to judge ill not to be deceived by them. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

There is no liar lying like an angry man. - Unknown

There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie. – Aeschylus

There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious. - Francis Bacon

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it. - William James

There is nothing worse for the lying soul than the mirror of reality. - Steve Maraboli

There must be repressed truth even in lies. - Stanislaw Ignacy

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 self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence. - William Faulkner

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies. - Dorothy Allison

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow colour-blind. - Austin O’Malley

Truly, to tell lies is not honourable; but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonourably is pardonable. - Sophocles 

Truth travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster. - Ariana Franklin

We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it's too weird to imagine people who aren't casually lying, pretty much all the time. - Chuck Klosterman

We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realising, on the man's part, the danger of telling lies to children. A single untruth on the part of the master will destroy the results of his education. - Jean Jacques Rousseau

When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived. - Dean Koontz

When the tongue lies, the eyes tell the truth. - George Horace Lorimer

Who lies for you will lie against you. - Bosnian Proverb

With lies you may get ahead in the world – but you can never go back. - Russian Proverb

With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive. - Gao XingJian

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom. - Anatole France

You may tell the greatest lies and wear a brilliant disguise, but you can't escape the eyes of the one who sees right through you. - Tom Robbins

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth. - William Shakespeare