Explore Quotes on Lying

As a writer of fiction, lying is the central thing to all books.

Malicious lying is usually a matter of need, but often the cruelest things we say are the truth.

Having to censor yourself - whether it's lying at the water cooler about how you spent your weekend, scrubbing your Facebook page of any revealing facts, or pretending to be with someone you aren't - is the antithesis of our foundation as a nation based on freedom of expression and association.

'The Decay Of Lying' is a very interesting treatise. It was actually penned as a dialogue between two characters, Cyril and Vyvyan, both of who were named after Wilde's sons. Wilde goes on to extrapolate art as a science and as a social pleasure, to its most logical and illogical extremes, and it ends up being very funny, indeed.

All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you're halfway to Methana.

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

But mostly they were lies I told; it wasn't my fault, I couldn't remember, because it was as though I'd been to one of those supernatural castles visited by characters in legends: once away, you do not remember, all that is left is the ghostly echo of haunting wonder.

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.

Walter's eyes were very wonderful. All the joy and sorrow and laughter and loyalty and aspirations of many generations lying under the sod looked out of their dark-gray depths.

Is a dream a lie if it don't come true? Or is it something worse?

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself

It is precisely because we resist the darkness in ourselves that we miss the depths of the loveliness, beauty, brilliance, creativity, and joy that lie at our core.

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

Here lies a toppled god. His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, A narrow and a tall one.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

And that's when she put her book down. And looked at me. And said it: "Life isn't fair, Bill. we tell our children that it is, but it's a terrible thing to do. It's not only a lie, it's a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it's never going to be.

He held up a book then. “I'm going to read it to you for relax.” “Does it have any sports in it?” “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.” “Sounds okay,” I said and I kind of closed my eyes.

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.