#Deceit Quotes

“Supposition all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.”

“This is some fellow,Who having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affectA saucy roughness and constrains the garbQuite from his nature: he can't flatter, he!An honest mind and plain,--he must speak truth!And they will take it so; if not he's plain.These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainnessHarbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,Than twenty silly, ducking observants,That stretch their duty nicely.”

“Tis not a year or two shows us a man:They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;They eat us hungerly, and when they are fullThey belch us.”

“Come, swear it, damn thyself, lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves should fear to seize thee; therefore be double-damned, swear,--thou art honest.”

“To say the truth, so Judas kissed his master And cried, 'All hail!' when as he meant all harm.”

“I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; I'll slay more gazers than the basalisks; I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Decieve more slily that Ulysses could, And like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages And set the murderous Machiavel to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.”

“You know That I do fawn on men, and hug them hard, And after scandal them.”

“The worm is not to be trusted.”

“Ever note, Lucilius, When love begins to sicken and decay It useth an enforced ceremony. There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; But hollow men, like horses hot at hand, Make gallant show and promise of their mettle; But when they should endure the bloody spur, They fall their crests, and like deceitful jades Sink in the trial.”

“It recognizes no morality but a sham morality meant for deceit, no honor even among thieves and of a thievish sort, no force but physical force, no intellectual power but cunning, no disgrace but failure, no crime but stupidity.”

“Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.”

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.”

“Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.”

“If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains.”

“One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours. They would shed their blood for you, risk their property, their lives, their children, so long, as I said above, as danger is remote; but when you are in danger they turn against you.”

“One can generally say this about men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain; and while you work for their good they are completely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons when danger is far away; but when it comes nearer to you, they turn away.”

“The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.”

“Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.”

“But the more these conscious illusions of the ruling class are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established society.”

“Οur own distrust somewhat justifies the deceit of others.”

“In love deceit almost always outstrips distrust.”

“Our distrust of another justifies his deceit.”

“In love the deceit generally outstrips the distrust.”

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”