A Liar Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to A Liar. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?" "Yes." "You called her a liar?" "Yes." "You told her He Who Must Not Be Named is back?" "Yes." "Have a biscuit, Potter.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
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Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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If you are a dreamer come in If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer If youre a pretender com sit by my fire For we have some flax golden tales to spin Come in! Come in!
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Shel Silverstein
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Be a little kinder than you have to.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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So you're always honest," I said. "Aren't you?" "No," I told him. "I'm not." "Well, that's good to know, I guess." "I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways." "How'd you mean it, then?" "I just...I don't always say what I feel." "Why not?" "Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said. "Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.
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Sarah Dessen (Just Listen)
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[H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.
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Jenny O'Connell (The Book of Luke)
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Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.
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Criss Jami
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You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
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When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.
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George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
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Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!
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Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
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Actually," said Jace, "I prefer to think that I'm a liar in a way that's uniquely my own.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
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You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0))
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He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.
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Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
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Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.
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Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
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People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
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Do not accept an evil you can change.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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livid, adj. Fuck You for cheating on me. Fuck you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. The same person who thought, oops, he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Fuck you. This isn’t about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.
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David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
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Always do what you're afraid to do.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret.
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Sara Shepard
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Love makes you a liar.
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Cassandra Clare
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We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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I'm still here, bitches. And I know everything." -A
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Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars (Pretty Little Liars, #1))
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The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
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George Bernard Shaw (The Quintessence of Ibsenism)
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I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
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J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
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There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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A liar, a thief, and utterly without conscience. But he'll keep to any deal you strike with him.
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Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
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The sweetest smiles hold the darkest secrets...
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Sara Shepard (Flawless (Pretty Little Liars, #2))
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There were a lot of answers I might've given, from "I knew that" to "LIAR!" to "Yeah right, and I'm Zeus." - Percy, after Quintus says that he is Daedalus
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Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
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No one believes a liar. Even when she's telling the truth.
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Sara Shepard (Heartless (Pretty Little Liars, #7))
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Are you insinuatin' that my daughter is a liar?" "Oh, no, not at all. I'm saying your daughter is a liar. Surely you can appreciate the difference.
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Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1))
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She is sugar, curiosity, and rain.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!
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Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
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The universe is seeming really huge right now. I need something to hold on to.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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What if we could stop being different colors, different backgrounds, and just be in love?
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last.
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Kristin O'Donnell Tubb (The 13th Sign)
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Silence is a protective coating over pain.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
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The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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When your lover is a liar, you and he have a lot in common, you're both lying to you!
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Susan Forward (When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal)
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The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.
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Stephen King
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If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you're intelligent, because you're decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes, then I'm disappointed; such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard.
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Milan Kundera (Slowness)
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No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar
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Abraham Lincoln
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Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth. [Verse 223]
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Gautama Buddha (The Dhammapada)
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Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.
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Kamand Kojouri
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See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Here I am frozen, when I deserve to burn.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words β€œI love you” are not enough to make up for that. Don’t kid yourself that they are.
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Susan Forward (When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal)
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Okay. Then...I can talk. Ask me something." "Okay." He laughs shakily in my ear. "Why is your heart racing Tris?" I cringe and say, "Well, I...I barely know you. I barely know you and I'm crammed up against you in a box, Four, what do you think?"... "Maybe you were cut out for Candor," he says, "because you're a terrible liar.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it
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Sara Shepard (Wanted (Pretty Little Liars, #8))
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Dear parents, Jasmine was in a relationship with a dirty homeless boy named Aladdin. Snow White lived alone with 7 men. Pinnochio was a liar. Robin Hood was a thief. Tarzan walked around without clothes on. A stranger kissed sleeping beauty and she married him. Cinderella lied and snuck out at night to attend a party. You can't blame us. We were taught to rebel since a young age.
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Walt Disney Company
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What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
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Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
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I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Always do what you're afraid to do. ... I will prove myself strong when they think I am sick. I will prove myself brave when they think I am weak.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Never under estimate a pretty little liar.
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Sara Shepard
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A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.
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Mary Karr (The Liars' Club)
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If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend: And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue, We will make amends ere long; Else the Puck a liar call; So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything.
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Chuck Klosterman
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The island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Better than chocolate, being with you last night. Silly me, I thought that nothing was better than chocolate.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Be sad, be sorry-but don't shoulder it.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.
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Rudyard Kipling (The Collected Works)
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Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
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Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
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Liars make the best promises.
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Pierce Brown (Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2))
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He was a person who couldn't fake a smile but smiled often.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.
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Al David
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Strangers see you the way you want them to see you. You can't fool friends…that's what makes them friends... Pretty Little Liars
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Sara Shepard
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Don't get too comfortable. It's not over until I say it is. -A
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Sara Shepard (Flawless (Pretty Little Liars, #2))
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There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.
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JosΓ© N. Harris
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I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn't know that I had it in me to fool myself.
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Lauren DeStefano (Wither (The Chemical Garden, #1))
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Hypocrites get offended by the truth.
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Jess C. Scott (Bad Romance: Seven Deadly Sins Anthology)
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I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
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W. Somerset Maugham (The Painted Veil)
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A coward talks to everyone but YOU.
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Shannon L. Alder
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They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn't play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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Yeah, well," I say, "I left Abnegation because I wasn't selfless enough, no matter how hard I tried to be." "That's not entirely true." He smiles at me. "That girl who let someone throw knives at her to spare a friend, who hit my dad with a belt to protect me-that selfless girl, that's not you?"... "You've been paying close attention, haven't you?" "I like to observe people/" "Maybe you were cut out for Candor, Four, because you're a terrible liar.
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Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the naughtiest of them all?
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Sara Shepard (Unbelievable (Pretty Little Liars, #4))
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One day, she ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
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You know what they say about hope. It breeds eternal misery!
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Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars (Pretty Little Liars, #1))
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If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.
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Shannon L. Alder
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We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That's why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.
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Holly Black (White Cat (Curse Workers, #1))
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I believe in God but people are liars. It's those people who say they are appointed by God who I don't believe in.
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Isaac Bashevis Singer (The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer)
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let it go -- the smashed word broken open vow or the oath cracked length wise -- let it go it was sworn to go let them go -- the truthful liars and the false fair friends and the boths and neithers -- you must let them go they were born to go let all go -- the big small middling tall bigger really the biggest and all things -- let all go dear so comes love
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E.E. Cummings
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May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not thereβ€”not in heavenβ€”not perishedβ€”where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayerβ€”I repeat it till my tongue stiffensβ€”May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not thereβ€”not in heavenβ€”not perishedβ€”where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayerβ€”I repeat it till my tongue stiffensβ€”Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed youβ€”haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me alwaysβ€”take any formβ€”drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
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Emily BrontΓ« (Wuthering Heights)
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1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things 2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same. 3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood. 4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home. 5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave. 6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember. 7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless. 8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth. 9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war. 10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes. 11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents. 12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay. 13. I’m not a dog. 14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong. 15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things. 16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother. 17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot. 18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me. 19. You were too cruel to love for a long time. 20. It just didn’t work out. 21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back. 22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth. 23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home. 24. The women in my family die waiting. 25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you. 26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me. 27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick. 28. He sent me a text that said β€œI love you so bad.” 29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile 30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love. 31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you. 32. I’m a lover without a lover. 33. I’m lovely and lonely. 34. I belong deeply to myself .
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Warsan Shire
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As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife! Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands. Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine, without batting an eyelash, and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least. Women are wonderful realists.
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Agatha Christie (Murder in Mesopotamia (Hercule Poirot, #14))
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freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.
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Bill Maher (When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism)
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its no surprise to me that anyone hardly tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel so strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.
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Henry Rollins
β€œ
Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
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Albert Camus (The Fall)
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I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!" Locke Lamora made this proclamation with his wine glass held high; he and the other Gentleman Bastards were seated at the old witchwood table. . . . The others began to jeer. "Liar!" they chorused "I only steal because this wicked world won't let me work an honest trade!" Calo cried, hoisting his own glass. "LIAR!" "I only steal," said Jean, "because I've temporarily fallen in with bad company." "LIAR!" At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, "I only steal because it's heaps of fucking fun!" "BASTARD!
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Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
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What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.
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Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
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Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound, then from my eyes, my ears, my mouth. It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.
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E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
β€œ
We have become a sloppy bunch of people. We say things we don't mean. We make promises we don't keep. "I'll call you." "Let's get together." We know we won't. On the Human Interaction Stock Exchange, our words have lost almost all their value. And the spiral continues, as we now don't even expect people to keep their word; in fact we might even be embarrassed to point out to the dirty liar that they never did what they said they'd do. So if a guy you're dating doesn't call when he says he's doing to, why should that be such a big deal? Because you should be dating a man who's at least as good as his word.
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Greg Behrendt
β€œ
Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture. Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own. Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed. Pity the nation β€” oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away. My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti
β€œ
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
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Theodore Dalrymple
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Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves -- this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars.
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Hilary Thayer Hamann (Anthropology of an American Girl)
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This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
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William Shakespeare (King Lear)
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MAKING THE LIE MAKE SENSE: When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find β€œgood reasons” to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with β€œgood reasons” for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him. Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities: β€’ He’s not the man I thought he was. β€’ The relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know what to do β€’ The relationship may be over. Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.
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Susan Forward (When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal)
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Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria: 1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...) 2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...) 3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts. 4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is to insult them, and the liar is diminished in the eyes of the person he lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at home, they don't show off to impress their juniors. (...) 5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is just cheap striving for effects, it's vulgar, old hat and false. (...) 6) They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewellery of hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the first person they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They regard prases like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of thing one only hears from [very minor journalists] -- as absurd. If they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off as if it were 100 roubles' by swanking about with their portfolios, and they don't boast of being able to gain admission to places other people aren't allowed in (...) True talent always sits in the shade, mingles with the crowd, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...) 7) If they do possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in it ... they know they have a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others] rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in their habits. (...) 8) They work at developing their aesthetic sensibility ... Civilized people don't simply obey their baser instincts ... they require mens sana in corpore sano. And so on. That's what civilized people are like ... Reading Pickwick and learning a speech from Faust by heart is not enough if your aim is to become a truly civilized person and not to sink below the level of your surroundings. [From a letter to Nikolay Chekhov, March 1886]
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Anton Chekhov (A Life in Letters)