Lying

By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. - Immanuel Kant

Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds. ~ Anton Chekhov

Lying is the act of making a statement that the speaker knows to be untrue. It is a form of dishonesty.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations · See also · External links

B

• In the midst of the disguises and artifices that reign among men, it is only attention and vigilance that can save us from surprises.
  • Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politics Drawn from the very words of Holy Scripture edited by Patrick Riley (1990).

• FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter: This is called right speech.
  • Gautama Buddha, Maha-cattarisaka Sutta, Pali Canon, as translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

• Having abandoned false speech, the recluse Gotama abstains from falsehood. He speaks only the truth, he lives devoted to truth; trustworthy and reliable, he does not deceive anyone in the world.
  • Gautama Buddha, Digha Nikaya, "Brahmajāla Sutta: The All-embracing Net of Views", translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, (2010), Sutta 1, verse 1.9.

• Resolved to die in the last dyke of prevarication.
  • Edmund Burke, Impeachment of Warren Hastings (May 7, 1789)

• Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat;
  Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 821

• And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
  The truth in masquerade.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto XI, Stanza 37

• I tell him, if a clergyman, he lies!
  If captains the remark, or critics, make,
  Why they lie also—under a mistake.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24)

C

• Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.
  • Anton Chekhov, in prevaricate – vocabulary

D

• All full of lies.
  • Debate between Silver and Copper (middle to late 3rd millennium BCE).

• Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported.
  • Frederick Douglass, "Our Composite Nationality" (7 December 1869), Boston, Massachusetts.

• To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations., as translated by Edward MacCurdy.

• Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations., as translated by Edward MacCurdy.

• Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy.

F

• It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.
  • Dorothy Catherine Fontana, in a line written for "Mr. Spock" (Leonard Nimoy), from the Star Trek episode, The Enterprise Incident (27 September 1968).

G

• As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths.
  • Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (2008), p. 60.

H

• I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

• Christopher Hampton Don, in The Philanthropist (1969), scene 6

• We discovered there were some Eastern Europeans who could defeat the polygraph at any time. Americans are not very good at it, because we are raised to tell the truth and when we lie it is easy to tell we are lying. But we find a lot of Europeans and Asiatics can handle that polygraph without a blip, and you know they are lying and you have evidence that they are lying.
  • Richard Helms, "Testimony of Richard Helms, Former Director of Central Intelligence, Former Ambassador to Iran, and Presently a Business Consultant in Washington, D.C., and Represented by Gregory B. Craig, of Williams & Connelly". mcadams.posc.mu.edu. 2001-01-29.

• Half the world knows not how the other half lies.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• Show me a liar, and I will show thee a thief.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• Children and fooles can not ly.
  • John Heywood Proverbs (1546) Part I, Chapter 11.

J

• You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
  • John 8:44, English Standard Version

K

• By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another … has even less worth than if he were a mere thing … makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.
  • Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of Virtue as translated by Mary J. Gregor (1964), p. 93.

• His supposed mythomania [of Diego Rivera] is in direct relation to his tremendous imagination. That is to say, he is as much of a liar as the poets or as the children who have not yet been turned into idiots by school or mothers. I have heard him tell all kinds of lies: from the most innocent, to the most complicated stories about people whom his imagination combined in a fantastic situation or actions, always with a great sense of humor and a marvelous critical sense; but I have never heard him say a single stupid or banal lie. Lying, or playing at lying, he unmasks many people, he learns the interior mechanism of others, who are much more ingenuously liars than he, and the most curious thing about the supposed lies of Diego, is that in the long and short of it, those who are involved in the imaginary combination become angry, not because of the lie, but because of the truth contained in the lie, that always comes to the surface.
  • Frida Kahlo on Diego Rivera, in Portrait of Diego [Retrato de Diego] (22 January 1949), first published in Hoy (Mexico City) and posthumously (17 July 1955) in Novedades (Mexico City): "México en la Cultura"

L

• Drummond: All shine, and no substance! Bert, whenever you see something bright, shining, perfect-seeming—all gold, with purple spots—look behind the paint! And if it’s a lie—show it up for what it really is!
  • Inherit the Wind (play) Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, (1955).

M

• For no falsehood can endure
  Touch of celestial temper.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 811.

• My body aches from mistakes betrayed by lust
  We lied to each other so much that in nothing we trust.
  • Trust, from the album Cryptic Writings by Megadeth, written by Dave Mustaine and Marty Friedman

• By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World’s Pain.
  • Michael Moorcock, The War Hound and the World’s Pain (1981), Chapter 16

P

• False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
  • Plato, Phaedes 91

S

• He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.
  • William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act IV, scene 3, line 283.

• To lapse in fulness
  Is sorer than to lie for need, and falsehood
  Is worse in kings than beggars.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act III, scene 6, line 12.

• Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act II, scene 1, line 63.

• 'Tis as easy as lying.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 372.

• These lies are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act II, scene 4, line 249.

• Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act V, scene 4, line 149.

• For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
  I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act V, scene 4, line 161.

• Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act III, scene 2, line 325.

• Whose tongue soe'er speaks false,
  Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act IV, scene 3, line 91.

• An evil soul producing holy witness
  Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
  A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
  O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 3, line 100.

• Everybody lies.
  • David Shore, House tagline.

• It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.
  • Solomon, Proverbs 19:1

• A lie never lives to be old.
  • Sophocles Acrisius, fragment 59.

• I mean you lie—under a mistake.
  • Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue 1. Same phrase used by De Quincey, Southey, Landor.

• If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it. But if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly; it is light as a feather and a breath will carry it.
  • Charles Spurgeon, Sermons delivered in Exeter Hall, Strand, during the enlargement of New Park Street Chapel, Southmark, (1855)

Y

• Now all the truth is out,
  Be secret and take defeat
  From any brazen throat,
  For how can you compete,
  Being honor bred, with one
  Who, were it proved he lies,
  Were neither shamed in his own
  Nor in his neighbors’ eyes?
  • W. B. Yeats, “To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing”

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 485-87.

• A giurar presti i mentitor son sempre.
  • Liars are always most disposed to swear.
  • Vittorio Alfieri, Virginia, II. 3.

• Se non volea pulir sua scusa tanto,
  Che la facesse di menzogna rea.
  • But that he wrought so high the specious tale,
    As manifested plainly 'twas a lie.
  • Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516), XVIII. 84.

• And none speaks false, when there is none to hear.
  • James Beattie, The Minstrel (1771), Book II, Stanza 24.

• You lie—under a mistake—
  For this is the most civil sort of lie
  That can be given to a man's face, I now
  Say what I think.
  • Calderon, El Magico Prodigioso, scene 1. Translation by Shelley.

• Ita enim finitima sunt falsa veris ut in præcipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere.
  • So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.
  • Cicero, Academici, IV. 21.

• Mendaci homini ne verum quidem dicenti credere solemus.
  • A liar is not believed even though he tell the truth.
  • Cicero, De Divinatione, II. 71. Same idea in Phædrusm Fables, I, 10, 1.

• The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples—that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
  • Mark Twain, My First Lie.

• An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.
  • Mark Twain, My Military Campaign.

• Un menteur est toujours prodigue de serments.
  • A liar is always lavish of oaths.
  • Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur, III. 5.

• Il faut bonne mémoire après qu'on a menti.
  • A good memory is needed once we have lied.
  • Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur, IV. 5.

• Some truth there was, but dash'd and brew'd with lies,
  To please the fools, and puzzle all the wise.
  • John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel.

• Wenn ich irre kann es jeder bemerken; wenn ich lüge, nicht.
  • When I err every one can see it, but not when I lie.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sprüche in Prosa, III.

• As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1768), Volume II, Chapter VIII.

• Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie;
  A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.
  • George Herbert, Church Porch.

• Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), VI.

• Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
  My heart detests him as the gates of hell.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book IX, line 412. Pope's translation.

• Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies;
  And sure he will; for wisdom never lies.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book III, line 25. Pope's translation.

• For my part getting up seems not so easy
  By half as lying.
  • Thomas Hood, Morning Meditations.

• Splendide mendax.
  • Splendidly mendacious.
  • Horace, Carmina, III. 11. 35.

• Round numbers are always false.
  • Samuel Johnson, Johnsoniana; Apothegms, Sentiment, etc. From Hawkins' Collective Edition.

• Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
  • False in one thing, false in everything.
  • Law Maxim.

• Qui ne sent point assez ferme de memoire, ne se doit pas mêler d'être menteur.
  • Who is not sure of his memory should not attempt lying.
  • Michel de Montaigne, Of Liars, Book I, Chapter IX.

• Hercle audivi esse optimum mendacium.
  Quicquid dei dicunt, id rectum est dicere.
  • By Hercules! I have often heard that your piping-hot lie is the best of lies: what the gods dictate, that is right.
  • Plautus, Mostellaria, III. 1. 134.

• Playing the Cretan with the Cretans (i.e. lying to liars).
  • Plutarch, quoting a Greek proverb used by Paulus Æmilius.

• Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,
  And some before the Speaker.
  • Winthrop Mackworth Praed, School and School Fellows.

• I said in my haste, All men are liars.
  • Psalms. CXVI. 11.

• The Book of Daniel is especially fitted to be a battle-ground between faith and unbelief. It admits of no half-way measures. It is either divine or an imposture. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied on a most frightful scale.
  • Edward Bouverie Pusey Daniel the Prophet (1865)

• Mendacem memorem esse oportet.
  • It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
  • Quintilian, IV. 2. 91.

• Ce mensonge immortel.
  • That immortal lie.
  • Rev. Père de Ravignan. Found in Poujoulat's Sa Vie, ses Œuvres.

• Had I a heart for falsehood framed.
  I ne'er could injure you.
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Duenna, Act I, scene 5.

• This shows that liars ought to have good memories.
  • Algernon Sidney, Discourses on Government, Chapter II, Section XV.

• A lie never lives to be old.
  • Sophocles, Acrisius, Fragment 59.

• That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
  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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Grandmother, Stanza 8.

• And he that does one fault at first,
  And lies to hide it, makes it two.
  • Isaac Watts, Song XV.

• An animal may be cunning and ferocious enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
  • H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

• I give him joy that's awkward at a lie.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 361.

See also

• Dishonesty