Quotes on Lying

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.

CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.

When true hearts lie wither'd And fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit This bleak world alone?

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

That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.

The lie was dead And damned, and truth stood up instead.

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.

To lapse in fulness Is sorer than to lie for need, and falsehood Is worse in kings than beggars.

Immoral: Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If mans notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from and nowise dependent on, their consequences-then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.

It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.

But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.

Life is like the harp string, if it is strung too tight it won't play, if it is too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle.

The greatness of our God lies in the fact that [He] is both tough minded and tender hearted.

The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

Beauty is self-defined, perceived and understood without ambiguity. It's the stuff that lies under the skins of our individual existences.

The way to attain the virtue of mercy lies in our constant awareness of being encompassed by mercy.

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: - in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.