Lies Quotes

“Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words “I love you” are not enough to make up for that. Don’t kid yourself that they are.”
― Susan Forward, When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal

“Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.”
― Barbara Bush

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.”
― Mark Twain

“There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.”
― José N. Harris

“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”
― Adrienne Rich, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying

“I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you vomit them out upon my face.”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.”
― Seneca, Natural Questions

“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“The only thing more frustrating than slanderers is those foolish enough to listen to them.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Always sleep with one eye open. Never take anything for granted. Your best friends might just be your enemies.”
― Sara Shepard, The Lying Game

“We met less than a week ago and in that time I've done nothing but lie and cheat and betray you. I know. But if you give me a chance...all I want is to protect you. To be near you. For as long as I'm able.”
― Marissa Meyer, Scarlet

“I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.”
― Scott Westerfield, Extras

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”
― Pablo Picasso

“The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.”
― Mark Twain

“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, Geek Love

“MAKING THE LIE MAKE SENSE:

When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find “good reasons” to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with “good reasons” for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him.

Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities:

• He’s not the man I thought he was.
• The relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know
what to do
• The relationship may be over.

Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.”
― Susan Forward, When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal