It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
-H. L. Mencken
"A Little Book in C Major"
Quotations
Lie
Do not assert with your mouth what your heart denies.
-Yin Chih Wen
A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.
-Charles Edward Montague
"Disenchantment"
No man should talk one way with his lips and think another way in his heart.
-The Talmud
"Baba Metzia 49"
We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
-Robert Paul “Tad” Williams
Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I never lie because I don't fear anyone. You only lie when you're afraid.
-Robert Brault
The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.
-Hannah Arendt
A lie is just the truth waiting to be itself.
-Terri Guillemets
Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.
-Jenny O'connell
"The Book of Luke"
