deception Quotes

“The Play’s the Thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t.”

“O serpent heart hid with a flowering face! Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest - A dammed saint, an honourable villain!”

“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

“The Devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.”

“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.”

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

“I think, sweetest child, that we should strike a bargain, you and I: if Westley wants to marry you still, bless you both. If, for reasons unpleasant to mention, his pride will not let him, then you will marry me, as planned, and be the Queen of Florin.”

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.”

“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!”

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

“None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy.”

“...no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.”

“Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee.”

People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.

“Why, you sure did give a jump when I told you that coon was coming, Chief. I thought somebody told me you was deef.”

“The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy’s warren and paying his price?”

“He began to shoot all elil—lendri, homba, stoat, owl. He put out food for the rabbits, but not too near the warren. For his purpose they had to become accustomed to going about in the fields and the wood. And then he snared them—not too many: as many as he wanted and not as many as would frighten them all away or destroy the warren. They grew big and strong and healthy, for he saw to it that they had all of the best, particularly in winter, and nothing to fear—except the running knot in the hedge gap and the wood path. So they lived as he wanted them to live and all the time there were a few who disappeared.”

“The sister could have no reason to lie to me. If Ella and I had married, she would only gain. But Ella’s note convinced me in the end. It was in her hand, and the last phrase about smiling at her jewels and laughing at the world was certainly her own. … She charmed me as easily as she did the ogres. … But her letters were the greatest deception of all. She seemed so good-hearted.”

“The chain? It binds me to the stall. I am the personal slave of the witch-woman who owns the stall. She caught me many years ago, luring me on and on in the form of a pretty frog always but a moment out of my reach, until I had left my father’s lands, unwittingly, whereupon she resumed her true shape and popped me into a sack.”

“’The subjects will eventually recall and understand the purpose of the hard things we have done and plan to do to them. The mission of WICKED is to serve and preserve humanity, no matter the cost. We are, indeed, ‘good’”

“Remember, actions speak louder than ‘There’s no cell reception where I am right now.‘”

“Remember, actions speak louder than ‘There’s no cell reception where I am right now.‘”

″‘They don’t want us banding together for higher wages or better housing,’ said Marta. ‘The owners think if Mexicans have no hot water, that we won’t mind as long as we think no one has any.‘”

“It’s an awful lot to take in, this elaborate plan in which I was a piece, just as I was meant to be a piece in the Hunger Games. Used without consent, without knowledge. At least in the Hunger Games, I knew I was being played with.”

“After all, it was the nature of twentieth-century capitalism that everyone should scam everyone, and he who scammed the most ultimately won the game. On that basis, I was the undefeated world champ.”

“At last the Turkish Delight was all finished and Edmund was looking very hard at the empty box and wishing that she would ask him whether he would like some more. Probably the Queen knew quite well what he was thinking; for she knew, though Edmund did not, that this was enchanted Turkish Delight and that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves.”

“All the things he had said to make himself believe that she was good and kind and that her side was really the right side sounded to him silly now.”

“Adams […] told me that he recognized these innocent-looking puffs of water vapor to be the crowns of robust thunderheads.”

Deception begins with bureaucracy.

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

“Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character.”

“See, fellows, there’s a system to getting out of work,” T.J. was expounding as I sat down. “Jus’ don’t be ‘round when it’s got to be done. Only thing is, you can’t let your folks know that’s what you’re doin’.”

“I despise you and everything you stand for.”

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.

Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money.

“Even though it clings to things of beauty, if their beauty is outside God and outside the soul, it only clings to sorrow.”

″‘Excuse me,’ said the Cat very politely, ‘but this interests me. Does your friend from Calormen say the same?’ ‘Assuredly,’ said the Calormene. ‘The enlightened Ape--Man, I mean--is in the right. Aslan means neither less nor more than Tash.’ ‘Especially, Aslan means no more than Tash?’ suggested the Cat. ‘No more at all,’ said the Calormene, looking the Cat straight in the face. ‘Is that good enough for you, Ginger?’ said the Ape. ‘Oh certainly,’ said Ginger cooly, ‘Thank you very much. I only wanted to be quite clear. I think I am beginning to understand.‘”

“It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely bewildered—so far, that is, as I was not outraged—by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was grotesque. She promptly understood me. ‘You mean the cruel charge—?’ ‘It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!‘”

“I am either deceived, or I am injured.”

“All shine, and no substance! (Turning to Cates) 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!”

“Remember that the evil one is the father of lies. Learn to recognize his deceptive intrusions into your thoughts. One of his favorite deceptions is to undermine your confidence in My unconditional Love.”

“The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me.”

“That fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, ‘I love you, but I think I love Boris best,’ told on me at last. I had never imagined that it could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had deceived myself.”

“Connor looks flustered and cornered for a moment before he comes to his senses and says, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.‘”

“At length the luminary of intelligence begins to beam its effulgent rays upon this important production; the deceptive mists cast before the eyes of the people by the delusive machinations of its INTERESTED advocates begins to dissipate, as darkness flies before the burning taper; and I dare venture to predict, that in spite of those mercenary dectaimers, the plan will have a candid and complete examination.”

″‘You two can do whatever you like. Risa and I broke up this morning. Should I turn off the light when I leave?‘”

“As the deception is removed, allow laws to be passed where our children will be taught of the Lord and our nation be filled with the glory of the Lord.”

“Let every veil of deception spread over America be destroyed.”

“Once I had three daughters. Tonight I am proud to have three daughters again.”

“Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed ‘Barney Northrup’. The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northup.”

“Some are not who they say they are, and some are not who they seem to be.”

“Angela could not be the bomber, not that sweet, pretty thing. Thing? Is that how she regarded that young woman, as a thing? And what had she ever said to her except ‘I hear you’re getting married, Angela’ or ‘How pretty you look, Angela.’ Had anyone asked her about her ideas, her hopes, her plans? If I had been treated like that I’d have used dynamite, not fireworks; no, I would have just walked out and kept right on going. But Angela was different.”

“Lies are not rooted in the mind in the way truth is.”

″All I will say is that sometimes what you see is not real, and sometimes what you do not see is real.”

“It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something rotten at its heart. Now he’s discovered it he can smell the stench of it everywhere.”

“You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make outselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offence. SO it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human.”

“I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley’s being imposed on, than that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without ceremony. If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his looks.”

“Good Cayley. Faithful Cayley! Mark’s courage comes back. Cayley will explain all right. Cayley will tell the servants that it was an accident. He will ring up the police. Nobody will suspect Cayley—Cayley has no quarrel with Robert.”

“You see,” he said to Bill, as they walked back, “we know that Cayley is perjuring himself and risking himself over this business, and that must be for one of two reasons. Either to save Mark or to endanger him. That is to say, he is either whole-heartedly for him or whole-heartedly against him. Well, now we know that he is against him, definitely against him.”

“I suppose you meant that Cayley deliberately betrayed Mark, and tried to make him look like a murderer?”

He gave his evidence carefully, unemotionally—the lies with the same slow deliberation as the truth. Antony watched him intently, wondering what it was about him which had this odd sort of attractiveness. For Antony, who knew that he was lying, and lying (as he believed) not for Mark’s sake but his own, yet could not help sharing some of that general sympathy with him.

Yes, I kept him outwardly decent; and perhaps now I was becoming like the cannibal who keeps his victim in good condition for his own ends.

He had only to deceive Miss Norris and the other guests; I had to deceive the world.

“He’s a clever devil. If you hadn’t turned up just when you did, he would never have been found out.”

“Come,” said he to himself, “be a man. I am accustomed to adversity. I must not be cast down by the discovery that I have been deceived. What, then, would be the use of all I have suffered? The heart breaks when, after having been elated by flattering hopes, it sees all its illusions destroyed.”

To the world and to his servants Danglars assumed the character of the good-natured man and the indulgent father. This was one of his parts in the popular comedy he was performing,—a make-up he had adopted and which suited him about as well as the masks worn on the classic stage by paternal actors, who seen from one side, were the image of geniality, and from the other showed lips drawn down in chronic ill-temper. Let us hasten to say that in private the genial side descended to the level of the other, so that generally the indulgent man disappeared to give place to the brutal husband and domineering father.

“I had only an indistinct understanding of what was passing around me. I said all that a man in such a state could say; but they both assured me that it was a jest they were carrying on, and perfectly harmless.”

Beppo told him he was going to take him to a villa a league from Rome; the Frenchman assured him he would follow him to the end of the world. The coachman went up the Via di Ripetta and the Porta San Paolo; and when they were two hundred yards outside, as the Frenchman became somewhat too forward, Beppo put a brace of pistols to his head, the coachman pulled up and did the same.

“As for myself, I first heard you spoken of by my friend Wilmore, the philanthropist. I believe he found you in some unpleasant position, but do not know of what nature, for I did not ask, not being inquisitive. Your misfortunes engaged his sympathies, so you see you must have been interesting. He told me that he was anxious to restore you to the position which you had lost, and that he would seek your father until he found him. He did seek, and has found him, apparently, since he is here now; and, finally, my friend apprised me of your coming, and gave me a few other instructions relative to your future fortune.”

The daring attempt to rob the count was the topic of conversation throughout Paris for the next fortnight. The dying man had signed a deposition declaring Benedetto to be the assassin. The police had orders to make the strictest search for the murderer. Caderousse’s knife, dark lantern, bunch of keys, and clothing, excepting the waistcoat, which could not be found, were deposited at the registry; the corpse was conveyed to the morgue. The count told everyone that this adventure had happened during his absence at Auteuil, and that he only knew what was related by the Abbé Busoni, who that evening, by mere chance, had requested to pass the night in his house, to examine some valuable books in his library. Bertuccio alone turned pale whenever Benedetto’s name was mentioned in his presence, but there was no reason why anyone should notice his doing so. Villefort, being called on to prove the crime, was preparing his brief with the same ardor that he was accustomed to exercise when required to speak in criminal cases. But three weeks had already passed, and the most diligent search had been unsuccessful; the attempted robbery and the murder of the robber by his comrade were almost forgotten in anticipation of the approaching marriage of Mademoiselle Danglars to the Count Andrea Cavalcanti.

consider the wastes of adulteration,—the shoddy clothing, the cotton blankets, the unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-preservers, the adulterated milk, the aniline soda water, the potato-flour sausages—”

“It is not easy for even you.” said Estella, “to know what satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a mere baby. I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. I had. You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the night. I did.”

“Ah! to be so mistaken in people!” said the princess, and by the change in her tone both Dolly and the prince knew she was speaking of Vronsky. “I don’t know why there aren’t laws against such base, dishonorable people.”

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

“He will lie—that is, the man who is a special case, the incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion;”

The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly malignant.

“Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that everything in the world is for the best.”

“Why, of course. Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most galy who knows best how to deceive himself. Ha-ha! But why are you so keen about virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful man. Ha-ha-ha!”