Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over, nature having provided king’s evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane, to show which way the wind blows, even when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together and sound the alarm of fear under a fierce countenance; the legs shake with anger, when all above is calm.
—Washington Allston (1779–1843) American Poet, Painter
I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Liars are always ready to take oaths.
—Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) Italian Poet, Dramatist
Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
—William Shenstone (1714–63) British Poet, Landscape Gardener
There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be discovered in a lie; for, as Montaigne saith—“A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in masquerade.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
A lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) English Occultist, Mystic, Magician
A fellow who says he has never told a lie has just told one.
—Unknown
Never to lie is to have no lock to your door, you are never wholly alone.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
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 the truth.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don’t.
—Unknown
Great talker, great liar.
—French Proverb
Nobody speaks the truth when there’s something they must have.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won’t.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, ’tis not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.
—Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British Head of State
Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) Russian Novelist, Essayist, Writer
Where lies are easily admitted, the father of lies is not easily kept out.
—Unknown
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
—Samuel Butler
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
If a man had the art of second-sight for seeing lies as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself by observing the different shapes, sizes, and colors of those swarms of lies, which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horse’s ears in summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon so as to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and thence sent down in cargoes, to be scattered at elections.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Lies which are told out of arrogance and ostentation, a man should detect in his own defense, because he should not be triumphed over. Lies which are told out of malice he should expose, both for his own sake and that of the rest of mankind, because every man should rise against a common enemy; but the officious liar, many have argued, is to be excused, because it does some man good, and no man hurt.
—Richard Steele (1672–1729) Irish Writer, Politician
I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.
—Homer (751–651 BCE) Ancient Greek Poet
By a lie, a man…annihilates his dignity as a man.
—Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Prussian German Philosopher, Logician
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
When the world has once got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to get it out of the world. You beat it about the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and lo! the next day it is as healthy as ever.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.
—Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish-American Poet, Novelist, Polemicist
A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.
—A. A. Milne (1882–1956) British Humorist, Playwright, Children’s Writer
The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.
—Minna Antrim (1861–1950) American Writer, Epigrammist
I don’t mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
—Samuel Butler
There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than any one can lie me out of it.
—Lyman Beecher (1775–1863) American Presbyterian Clergyman
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
—James Thurber
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out; it is always near at hand and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man’s invention on the rack, and one trick needs a great many more of the same kind to make it good.
—John Tillotson
A lie, though it be killed and dead, can sting sometimes,—like a dead wasp.
—Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) Irish-born Literary, Art Critic
They say is often a great liar.
—Common Proverb
This is the punishment of the liar, that when he tells the truth nobody believes him.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time till at length it becomes habitual.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Falsehood and fraud grow up in every soil, the product of all climes.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
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