Inspirational deceit quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.
Famous Deceit Quotes
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. – Phineas T. Barnum
It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. – Noël Coward
He seemed For dignity compos’d and high exploit: But all was false and hollow. – John Milton
Anything is better than lies and deceit! – Leo Tolstoy
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. – Mark Twain
God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another. – Shakespeare
All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things. – Robert South
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. – William Shakespeare
Deceit is in haste, but honesty can wait a fair leisure – Proverb
When one with honeyed words but evil mind. Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. – Euripides
Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don’t insult them. – Japanese Proverb
I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another. – Osamu Dazai
Lying and stealing are next door neighbors. – Arabic Proverb
It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth. – Robert Armstrong
Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast. – Jane Austen
A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. – William Blake
When your lover is a liar, you and he have a lot in common, you’re both lying to you! – Susan Forward
With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back. – Proverb
You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it. – Libba Bray
You may tell the greatest lies and wear a brilliant disguise, but you can’t escape the eyes of the one who sees right through you. – Tom Robbins
To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken. – Dark Jar Tin Zoo
Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth. – William Hazlitt
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. – Desiderius Erasmus
O, what a tangled web we weave; When first we practice to deceive! – Sir Walter Scott
Never judge someone by their relatives. – Charles Martin
Yeah, it never fails to amaze me how a single lie can undo an entire lifetime of good. – Sherrilyn Kenyon
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. – Plato
I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you. – Friedrich Nietzsche
What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave. – Criss Jami
We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them. – Samuel Butler
youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope. – Aristotle
Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited. James Cardinal Gibbons
Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. – Michel Houellebecq
A lie which is a half truth is ever the blackest of lies. – Alfred Lord Tennyson
A liar is always lavish of oaths. – Pierre Corneille
When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. – Michael Ende
Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it. – Anonymous
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest. – Benjamin Franklin
One may outwit another, but not all the others. – François de La Rochefoucauld
Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth. – Socrates
She was a ray of sunshine, a warm summer rain, a bright fire on a cold winter’s day, and now she could be dead because she had tried to save the man she loved. – Grace Willows
It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver. – Jean De La Fontaine
I survive at the edge of friends circles. – Holly Black
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others. – William Hazlitt
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities. – Christian Nevell Bovee
We are easily fooled by that which we love. – Moliere
Our distrust of another justifies his deceit – La Rochefoucauld
It is a pity that we so often succeed our endeavors to deceive each other. – Empress Irene
The cunning man uses deceit, but the more cunning man shuns deception – Adam Ferguson
All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things. – Robert South
We never deceive for a good purpose; knavery adds malice to falsehood. – La Bruyere
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act – George Orwell
Deceit is in haste, but honesty can wait a fair leisure. – Proverb
It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. – Noel Coward
One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground –Baltasar Gracian
Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. – Bible
Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the counsellors of peace is joy. – Bible
Skilled in every trick, a worthy heir of his paternal craft, he would make black look like white, and white look black. – Ovid
The most deceitful persons spend their lives in blaming deceit, so as to use it on some great occasion to promote some great interest. – Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Trust not in him that seems a saint. – Thomas Fuller
Nothing is more easy than to deceive one’s self, as our affections are subtle persuaders. – Demosthenes
Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth. – William Hazlitt
False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. – Christian N Bovee
A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths. – Marina Tsvetaeva
All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things. – Robert Southey
Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another. – Homer
It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the ‘fronts” people assume before one another’s eyes, and the ”front” a writer puts on the face of reality. – Francoise Sagan
The art of pleasing is the art of deception. – Marquis De Vauvenargues
We pay a person the complement of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them. – Samuel Butler
Persistent distrust is the flame of deceit. Be as good as your word or be signed by the heat. – Wes Fessler
With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other. – Charles Dickens
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. – Oscar Wilde
Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited. – James Cardinal Gibbons
None are deceived but they that confide. – Benjamin Franklin
The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly deceived. – Oscar Wilde
