Lying Quotes

The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because he says it to me over and over again I am convinced it is the truth because I don't believe he would repeat a lie so often. Maybe the truth does not matter, but I want to know it if only so that I can come to some conclusions about such questions as: whether he is angry at me or not; if he is, then how angry; whether he still loves her or not; if he does, then how much; whether he loves me or not; how much; how capable he is of deceiving me in the act and after the act in the telling.

~ Lydia Davis

The funny thing about a lie is that once it has been said and believed, it lives and becomes. It can't be taken back. It sucks all the air from you until you give up and it takes over and you forget how to breathe on your own. It is like those parasitic relationships, but not like the shark and the little remora that politely cleans the shark's skin and sometimes attaches itself to its underbelly. No, it is more like a tapeworm eating someone from the inside out.

~ Carrie Arcos

Talking is not easy. Talking intends to convey what you mean. Lying is easy, not talking. When one lies, one doesnot care, and that’s the easy part.

~ Ravindra Shukla

If I told you, you might be forced to lie about it. Not that you aren't really good at it, but why put an old man in that position?

~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.

~ Saul Bellow

Why would you tell us the truth? If Christina really wasn’t here, you’d tell us she was, to stall us from finding her. If James taught us one thing, it’s how to detect a lie. You just want us to leave so you can get her to talk. By the way, good luck with that -- Ida can’t even get her to admit that she stole her cousin’s candy at Halloween last year. And that was pretty obvious.

~ Embee

A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.

~ Alfred Tennyson

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

~ Dave Eggers

Confronting a liar makes a better liar.

~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can―for a time. But not a very long time.

~ Tom Clancy

We must know something about malevolence, about how to recognize it, and about how not to make excuses for it. We must know that we cannot expect fair play.That is, perhaps, most crucial of all. Those of us who practice in this field must face the implications of the fact that we are dealing with sexual abuse. Child sex offenders-people who exploit children’s bodies and betray their trust-are not going to hesitate to lie outright. This is obvious but nonetheless frequently seems to catch people by surprise.Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998

~ Anna C. Salter

I slowly climbed back to my feet, walked back into the emergency department through the silently swishing glass doors, and, covered in my girlfriend's blood, lied perfectly for the first time in my life. I tried to stop her.

~ Maggie Stiefvater

Everyone's always making fun of him and calling him crazy behind his back, but I can kind of understand how someone would end up that way. I mean, if no one ever pays attention to you telling the truth, then it probably makes sense to try lying for a change.

~ Amy Reed

But mothers lie. It's in the job description.

~ John Green

Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?

~ John Green

My parents raised me to get things done, no matter what. They don’t care about rules, just appearances. This whole time I’ve been telling myself that I’m going to be different from my parents, different from my sister, be the one who stuck to the straight and narrow. But I think I had it all wrong, Call. I don’t care about rules or appearances. I don’t want to be the person who just gets things done. I want to do the right thing. I don’t care if we have to lie or cheat or cut corners or break rules to do it.

~ Cassandra Clare

The truly scary thing about undiscovered lies is that they have a greater capacity to diminish us than exposed ones. They erode our strength, our self-esteem, our very foundation.

~ Cheryl Hughes

I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.

~ Nancy Farmer

When people cheat in any arena, they diminish themselves-they threaten their own self-esteem and their relationships with others by undermining the trust they have in their ability to succeed and in their ability to be true.

~ Cheryl Hughes

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

~ Patricia Briggs

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.

~ Yogi Berra

She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.

~ Holly Black

The secret is to know how to lie he used to say, and to know when someone's lying to you. His father, Steve eventually decided, must have known how to lie.

~ Nicholas Sparks

The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.

~ Elena Gorokhova

No. It's actually not okay. And I hate when people say that, when they say it's okay even though it's not. It's better to tell the truth.

~ Nancy Werlin

When the sky’s falling, I take shelter under bullshit.

~ Scott Lynch

Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.

~ Victoria Schwab

And this wasn’t lying, not really. It was leaving out.

~ Stephen King

It's not lying when you do it to officers!

~ Terry Pratchett

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

~ Thomas Jefferson

When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious.

~ John Grisham

The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.

~ Sarah Dessen

The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.

~ Mark Twain

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

Mike drank straight from the carton, wiped his mouth, and stared at her. You've been acting freaky. Are you high? Can I have some if you are?

~ Sara Shepard

Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion…

~ Jane Austen

Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication--in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.

~ Rachel Cohn

To begin with, I had never done any good deeds; besides, even if I had simply fabricated a few, I would not have enjoyed going on about them.

~ M. Ageyev