Life is the art of being well deceived.
—William Hazlitt, c. 1817
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Quotes
Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
—Czeslaw Milosz, 1946And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but the truth in masquerade.
—Lord Byron, 1822If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.
—Congolese proverbChildren and fools cannot lie.
—John Heywood, 1546It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987Your piping-hot lie is the best of lies.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCHonesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.
—Patricia Highsmith, 1960We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.
—Tennessee Williams, 1953Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.
—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875