Lying Narcissist Quotes

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Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms)
A narcissist never has your back.
Zari L. Ballard (When Love Is a Lie - Narcissistic Partners & the Pathological Relationship Agenda)
Gaslighting are lies with a purpose to confuse and control.
Tracy Malone
You know intuitively that love is not insulting, criticizing, cheating, and lying. Love does not make you feel suicidal. Love does not mock you for having hurt feelings.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
She tries her hardest to make a genuine connection with Mom, but fails, and thinks that the problem of rarely being able to please her mother lies within herself.
Karyl McBride (Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputation. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible.
Ilona Andrews (Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #1))
When confronted by a narcissist's lies - do not engage simply say 'that is one way to look at it' and walk away.
Tracy Malone
We must be cautious of those who perceive their lies as the truth.
Angel Moreira
Psychopaths project and blame you for their own behavior. They accuse you of being negative when they are the most negative people in the world. They gaslight you into believing that your normal reactions to their abuse are the problem—not the abuse itself. When you feel angry and hurt because of their silent treatment, broken promises, lying, or cheating, there is something wrong with you. When you call them out on their dishonest behavior, you’re the abnormal one who is too sensitive, too critical, and always focusing on the negative.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
Dysfunctional parents do not apologise. It is one feature that the children of narcissists would instantly agree on. They will lie and justify themselves, but never accept they did anything wrong.
Diana Macey (Narcissistic Mothers and Covert Emotional Abuse: For Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents)
Either way, you wrote the book and now you’re complaining about the reviews I’m giving it,” I quipped. “Fair enough.” He held up his hands, “I’m going to start writing the sequel which will be considerably less narcissistic. Will you read it?” “Only if every other girl on campus hasn’t.
Tarryn Fisher (The Opportunist (Love Me with Lies, #1))
Here lies the partner's salvation: if you, as his intimate, wish to sever your relationship with the narcissist, stop providing him with what he needs. Do not adore, admire, approve, applaud, or confirm anything he does or says. Disagree with his views belittle him, reduce him to size, compare him to others, tell him he is not unique, criticize him, give unsolicited advice, and offer him help. In short, deprive him of the grandiose and fantastic illusions, which holds his personality together. The narcissist is a delicately attuned piece of equipment. At the first sign of danger to his inflated False Self, he will quit and disappear on you.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
They are compulsive liars. A tactic they use is to add a nugget of truth to the lies so make them more believable.
Tracy Malone
Narcissists gaslight you so you begin to gaslight yourself into thinking what you are feeling, hearing, seeing and experiencing isn’t true. A narcissistic partner can manipulate you into thinking that perhaps that hurtful comment really was just a joke and that their infidelity was just a one-time thing. Many of these partners engage in pathological lying and rewrite reality on a daily basis to suit their needs and to conceal their manipulative agenda.
Shahida Arabi (Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself)
By the time you get to the magic number 10, it really is game over. Self -confidence, self-belief, self-esteem- just about everything in fact- is well and truly on the floor. A long, painful, drawn-out recovery process lies ahead.
A.B. Jamieson (Prepare to be tortured: - the price you will pay for dating a narcissist)
Our Narcissistic Mother told us a Big Lie. She told it subliminally if not in actual words. And The Big Lie was this: If we tried hard enough we could win her approval and her love. If we were good enough, or wise enough, or beautiful enough, or that-magical-unspecified-ingredient enough. In other words, if we achieved perfection, she would love us.
Danu Morrigan (You're Not Crazy—It's Your Mother! Understanding and Healing for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
People only believe the truth that their self-esteem will allow.
Shannon L. Alder (The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Bible: Spiritual Recovery from Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse)
They told me I would never amount to anything unless I married a man to take care of me. Never listen to that lie, always care for yourself.
Tracy Malone
Honesty is better than sugar coated bullshit.
Tracy A. Malone
A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie. One forty-something client told me his vision, formulated by his younger self: “I see myself retired, sitting on a tropical beach, drinking margaritas in the sunshine.” That’s not a plan. That’s a travel poster. After eight margaritas, you’re fit only to await the hangover. After three weeks of margarita-filled days, if you have any sense, you’re bored stiff and self-disgusted. In a year, or less, you’re pathetic. It’s just not a sustainable approach to later life. This kind of oversimplification and falsification is particularly typical of ideologues. They adopt a single axiom: government is bad, immigration is bad, capitalism is bad, patriarchy is bad. Then they filter and screen their experiences and insist ever more narrowly that everything can be explained by that axiom. They believe, narcissistically, underneath all that bad theory, that the world could be put right, if only they held the controls.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
You are enough, you can care for yourself. Stop believing the narcissists lies and do the work to heal.
Tracy A. Malone
When you struggle with fear and trust issues, be aware that you may not trust yourself. You are the first person you must learn to trust.
Tracy Malone
I will lie in order to deflect criticism.
H.G. Tudor (Confessions of a Narcissist)
Everything that comes out of the mouth of a narcissist should be considered a lie.
Tracy Malone
Know that...there's plenty of food and of course popcorn on the dining-room table. Just...help yourself. If that runs out just let me know. Don't panic. And there's coffee, both caff and decaf, and soft drinks and juice in the kitchen, and plenty of ice in the freezer so...let me know if you have any questions with that.' And lastly, since I have you all here in one place, I have something to share with you. Along the garden ways just now...I too heard the flowers speak. They told me that our family garden has all but turned to sand. I want you to know I've watered and nurtured this square of earth for nearly twenty years, and waited on my knees each spring for these gentle bulbs to rise, reborn. But want does not bring such breath to life. Only love does. The plain, old-fashioned kind. In our family garden my husband is of the genus Narcissus , which includes daffodils and jonquils and a host of other ornamental flowers. There is, in such a genus of man, a pervasive and well-known pattern of grandiosity and egocentrism that feeds off this very kind of evening, this type of glitzy generosity. People of this ilk are very exciting to be around. I have never met anyone with as many friends as my husband. He made two last night at Carvel. I'm not kidding. Where are you two? Hi. Hi, again. Welcome. My husband is a good man, isn't he? He is. But in keeping with his genus, he is also absurdly preoccupied with his own importance, and in staying loyal to this, he can be boastful and unkind and condescending and has an insatiable hunger to be seen as infallible. Underlying all of the constant campaigning needed to uphold this position is a profound vulnerability that lies at the very core of his psyche. Such is the narcissist who must mask his fears of inadequacy by ensuring that he is perceived to be a unique and brilliant stone. In his offspring he finds the grave limits he cannot admit in himself. And he will stop at nothing to make certain that his child continually tries to correct these flaws. In actuality, the child may be exceedingly intelligent, but has so fully developed feelings of ineptitude that he is incapable of believing in his own possibilities. The child's innate sense of self is in great jeopardy when this level of false labeling is accepted. In the end the narcissist must compensate for this core vulnerability he carries and as a result an overestimation of his own importance arises. So it feeds itself, cyclically. And, when in the course of life they realize that their views are not shared or thier expectations are not met, the most common reaction is to become enraged. The rage covers the fear associated with the vulnerable self, but it is nearly impossible for others to see this, and as a result, the very recognition they so crave is most often out of reach. It's been eighteen years that I've lived in service to this mindset. And it's been devastating for me to realize that my efforts to rise to these standards and demands and preposterous requests for perfection have ultimately done nothing but disappoint my husband. Put a person like this with four developing children and you're gonna need more than love poems and ice sculpture to stay afloat. Trust me. So. So, we're done here.
Joshua Braff (The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green)
your healing process should not revolve around giving or withholding attention from someone else. You should be going No Contact because you genuinely believe that you deserve better. This is someone who manipulated, lied, abused, and deeply hurt you.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
UNREALITY IS THE HALLMARK of narcissism. Whether it’s idealizations, expectations of perfection, manufactured images, illusions, distortions of fact, catastrophizing or other kinds of exaggerations, denial, or outright lying, Narcissists will go to great lengths to avoid any reality that evokes shame and to promote fanatasies that sustain their grandiosity and omnipotence. They require accomplices for this, people to admire them and do their bidding,
Sandy Hotchkiss (Why Is It Always About You? : The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism)
her mother in order to win her love and approval. The daughter doesn’t realize that the behaviors that will please her mother are entirely arbitrary, determined only by her mother’s self-seeking concern. Most damaging is that a narcissistic mother never approves of her daughter simply for being herself, which the daughter desperately needs in order to grow into a confident woman. A daughter who doesn’t receive validation from her earliest relationship with her mother learns that she has no significance in the world and her efforts have no effect. She tries her hardest to make a genuine connection with Mom, but fails, and thinks that the problem of rarely being able to please her mother lies within herself. This teaches the daughter that she is unworthy of love. The daughter’s notion of mother-daughter love is warped; she feels she must “earn” a close connection by seeing to Mom’s needs and constantly doing what it takes to please her. Clearly, this isn’t the same as feeling loved. Daughters of narcissistic mothers sense that their picture of love is distorted, but they don’t know what the real picture would look like. This early, learned equation of love—pleasing another with no return for herself—has far-reaching, negative effects on a daughter’s future romantic relationships,
Karyl McBride (Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
Being raised by a narcissist is a special kind of crazy. It is a pure and lasersharp form of psychological and emotional abuse. But even more devastatingly, it is an invisible abuse. Neither the perpetrator nor the victim even knows it‟s happening. The perpetrator, the narcissist, doesn‟t think she‟s abusing anyone because, by definition, she‟s perfect, remember, and perfect people don‟t do imperfect things like abuse people. And the abuse victim, the daughter – this would be you – doesn‟t realise she‟s abused because she believes her mother‟s lies and thinks that everything is her fault, that she is the one who is broken.
Danu Morrigan (You're Not Crazy—It's Your Mother! Understanding and Healing for Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
When we care too much for a person that doesn’t care at all, we lose ourselves. Never again should you allow to not be given to equally.
Tracy Malone
You can take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear. -- Mark Twain
Alexandra Nouri (Aunt Alex's Army Manual: How to Free Yourself From the Narcissist)
You don't spill your lies on the pages that I write on.
Laura Gentile (Daughterbody II: a self-reclamation through poetry)
I fear a future that I cannot grasp, As I bargain myself through this life. My promises are fantasies which I sell and buy, And the more I lust the more I lie,
Piyush Rohankar (Narcissistic Romanticism)
Statistics show that a narcissistic mother has a 98% chance of raising a narcissistic son. As a result, he will lie, cheat, steal, & in some cases, kill.
Mitta Xinindlu
Narcissistic Lies - In the eyes of a narcissist they do nothing wrong and they are always the victim. So the stories they create (the lies) are what they actually believe. Tracy A. Malone.
Tracy A. Malone
narcissistic personality disorder—the characteristics of this diagnosis include a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, cravings for admiration, and impaired empathy.
Freida McFadden (Never Lie)
Pathological narcissism begins when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their “high,” including lie, steal, cheat, betray, and even hurt those closest to them. Imagine this starting around 9 on the spectrum and getting worse as we approach 10. At these points, you’re in the realm of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Bandy X. Lee (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President)
A narcissist can be your husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbor, boss, church member or anyone you come in contact with. There is endless possibilities of “who” they can be. The important thing to remember is the actions, behaviors are all very similar.
Tracy Malone
A false image is, of course, a work of art, an idol. And a lie. A narcissist identifies with this image, not his true inner self. So, all he cares about is his image, not what kind of person he really is. Indeed, the latter has no real existence in his world. In identifying with his image, he's identifying with an ephemeral figment that has but virtual reality, a purely immanent existence as a reflection in the attention shone on him by others. No attention, no image. No image, no self!
Kathy Krajco (What Makes Narcissists Tick: Understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder)
We have to take a stand against deception, take action against all lying, and together, as a society, using awareness, discernment, and understanding, empower ourselves to call bullshit against bullshit!
Elevia DeNobelia - Syl Sabastian
The difference lies in how you act upon those insecurities. Psychopaths see them as a way to manipulate & control. Empathetic people, on the other hand, seek to cure insecurities with love and compassion.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
I pretend to give gifts that people pretend to be gifts so that I can pretend that I gave something that actually cost me something. And what pretending of this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
This is someone who manipulated, lied, abused, and deeply hurt you. As you develop self-respect, you should come to understand that this is all more than enough reason to remove someone from your life—permanently.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
Narcissists are blamers, they are not capable to take responsibility. At first you know it is not your fault, over time you get exhausted from trying to explain your innocence and you surrender to the lies, just to keep the peace.
Tracy Malone
Narcissists are blamers, they are not capable of taking responsibility. At first you know it is not your fault, over time you get exhausted from trying to explain your innocence and you surrender to the lies, just to keep the peace.
Tracy A. Malone
Extremism stifles true progression in all fields of human advancement; it is a detriment to everything but war, tribalism and the personal power of Nietzschean entities, striving only for the narcissistic vindication of their ego and will. The enlightened mind knows that all is challengeable, ergo questions all and thus, learns and grows; progression. The weak and narrow mind makes its beliefs sacrosanct; fearful of challenge, their creed becomes unalterable, defended with violence. Political extremists, much like religious zealots, are the latter. They destroy what they cannot convert. They annihilate those they cannot control, or force to conform. They have found no peace in life, no love, and so promote war and division, as emotional cripples – inflicting their own pain and misery and malignant stupidity on the world. Their language binds people together, but only by stirring the darkest excesses of the soul; language of hate, and intolerance, fear and conspiracy, and the need for vengeance. In war-scarred Europe, these cripples direct mass-psychology, and would make the world in their own likeness; mutilated by violence and tribalism and hate.
Daniel S. Fletcher (Jackboot Britain)
This is what happens when you enter the psychopath’s reality—all of their gossip and lies start to distort your own reality. Because here are the two realities you must choose from: The psychopath is normal. Everyone else is jealous, ill-intentioned, and self-serving. The psychopath is jealous, ill-intentioned, and self-serving. Everyone else is normal.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
Please put on your narc-glasses. Think, Think... Were there signs you missed. Narcissists leave trails, they think you are stupid because you are controlled by love & trust. You missed the sign then, find it now and start controlling your own future.
Tracy Malone
A daughter who doesn’t receive validation from her earliest relationship with her mother learns that she has no significance in the world and her efforts have no effect. She tries her hardest to make a genuine connection with Mom, but fails, and thinks that the problem of rarely being able to please her mother lies within herself. This teaches the daughter that she is unworthy of love. The daughter’s notion of mother-daughter love is warped; she feels she must “earn” a close connection by seeing to Mom’s needs and constantly doing what it takes to please her. Clearly, this isn’t the same as feeling loved. Daughters of narcissistic mothers sense that their picture of love is distorted, but they don’t know what the real picture would look like.
Karyl McBride (Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
Narcissists Cheat. If they have been caught in other lies, what makes you believe their cheating lies? What is your die hard boundary on cheating? Once? Twice? Remember your children are watching and learning how they should be treated. Stand up for them.
Tracy Malone
Narcissistic Parents often enlist other family members on their side, causing rifts and building alliances against a “bad” child. In other words, they may bully their own children. The victims of such behavior often describe themselves as a “scapegoat,” held accountable for all the family troubles. Their mothers often compare them unfavorably to a sibling viewed as “golden,” one child a loser and the other a winner. Narcissistic Parents tell blatant lies, too, painting themselves as victims and their children as heartless ingrates.
Joseph Burgo (The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me Age)
The worst sadness is when you find out your life was a lie.
Tracy Malone
The best I can do is to ‘pretend’ that I’m my own god. But in the pretending I have to pretend that I’m not pretending, and somehow that doesn’t sound very god-like to me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Everything happens because there was a lesson you needed to learn. Move on from the messenger they were not the lesson. Find the lesson and you will never repeat it again.
Tracy Malone
What
Zari L. Ballard (When Love Is a Lie - Narcissistic Partners & the Pathological Relationship Agenda)
If you lash out and begin uncovering their lies, they will do everything in their power to drive you to suicide.
Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
Some people, in an attempt to mask their shortcomings dig lies so deep, they end up drowning in a sea of their own delusions!
Carlos Wallace (Life Is Not Complicated-You Are: Turning Your Biggest Disappointments into Your Greatest Blessings)
When a Narcissist says he doesn't lie, he is lying.
Tracy A. Malone
Gaslighting: where the narcissist’s lies cast shadows on your reality.
Tracy Malone
here lies you’re crazy and i’m a narcissist and honestly i can’t close the casket on that one because although i prefer dramatic i know that it’s true
Michaela Angemeer (You'll Come Back to Yourself)
A MASK OF LIES IS BUILT TO TRAP YOU. TOO MANY THINGS IN COMMON SHOULD RAISE RED FLAGS, UNTIL COMMONALITIES ARE PROVEN.
Tracy A. Malone
A lie only has power until the light of truth exposes it.
Tracy A. Malone
The journey is to find our way back to the start, And seek the future in our past, For far into the distance I see someone like me, Trying to figure out the same old lie that life is…
Piyush Rohankar (Narcissistic Romanticism)
You know that unforgivable lie they tell about you. You may struggle with this one because you know, they know the truth. You are a good parent, but the lie must be implanted for them to win. It's a strategy and they don't care what it does to you or the kids because they have no empathy. It comes down to, they simply do not care about anyone but themselves. They must win.
Tracy A. Malone
Were you blamed for their cheating? They choose to cheat, they choose to hide it, they choose to lie. All of these are a sign of a selfish, lying cheat who is so weak to not take any responsibility for their actions. To prove themselves even lower than pond scum, they add insult to injury by blaming you! Unless you drove them on the date, this is not your fault. It's gaslighting. Run!
Tracy A. Malone
Suffer now they said for a better distant life, It’s a lie I need to believe in because everyone else does. And I wonder if self-control means waiting? Because that’s the only thing I have ever done…
Piyush Rohankar (Narcissistic Romanticism)
As I picked up the pieces, it became apparent that she was a narcissist, who took pleasure in breaking down this beautiful self I built up with much care. A damaged and misguided empath, she used her emotional intelligence to manipulate those around her, living multiple lies and pumping up her fake public image. I can only hope that she heals and finds herself one day and that her victims survive her.
Innocent Mwatsikesimbe
The most important thing you can do in a relationship is to not lie to yourself. Have the courage to act on those gut feelings. If you think he is cheating then he probably is. Don't become one of those women that ignores the possibility in order to hang onto him longer. If he is cheating then he already left a long time ago. Have the self respect to see your relationship honestly and not how you wish it was.
Shannon L. Alder (The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Bible: Spiritual Recovery from Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse)
People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible.
Ilona Andrews (Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #1))
The lives of narcissists are built upon falsehoods. They show no concern for the harm caused by their lies, as empathy towards others is absent. This lack of empathy renders them highly perilous and untrustworthy.
Tracy Malone
I must admit I found forgiveness a hard pill to swallow. I never really liked people telling me to forgive my abuser. I finally get it, forgiveness removes the negative energy this unforgiveness brings. Forgiveness shoes unconditional love for ourselves.
Tracy Malone
Actually, what he had done is come out of his cave looking for a woman, got his bat out, walked into the first place that had women, and hit the prettiest over the head with a bat and dragged her out kicking and screaming. A Neanderthal man! Nikita thought,
Nicci Wilder (Million Lies Away)
No matter what you’re doing, it just keeps advancing to the next frame…and the next and the next…until the grand, crushing finale at which point the loop simply starts all over. This is why we are always exhausted and so willing to just give in…to let things go.
Zari L. Ballard (When Love Is a Lie - Narcissistic Partners & the Pathological Relationship Agenda)
People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible. John Rutger lied because he was a scumbag. Nothing about his appearance said, Hey, I'm a despicable human being.
Ilona Andrews (Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #1))
Trump’s ridiculousness, his narcissistic ability to make everything about himself, the outrageousness of his lies, and the profundity of his ignorance can easily distract attention from the more lasting implications of his story: how easily Republicans in Congress enabled him, undermining the whole concept of checks and balances set in place by the founders; how a third of the country passively accepted his assaults on the Constitution; how easily Russian disinformation took root in a culture where the teaching of history and civics had seriously atrophied.
Michiko Kakutani (The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump)
Abusers happily cheat, lie, verbally assault, manipulate, confuse, and ignore others, but survivors often find that when they try to react firmly and stand up to this abuse, they immediately end up feeling bad. Let go of this inner turmoil. Having boundaries is what makes you healthy.
Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
A feeling that she is of spring making love, To the trees green and the doves, The same feeling of lying naked on the grass, And watch the rain falling from the stars. A feeling that she is that walks in and slips away, Like the sand of an hourglass. Oh her home the realm of feelings…
Piyush Rohankar (Narcissistic Romanticism)
Never Underestimate the Divine Strength of a Mother who appears Broken..... This phrase, in the most reciprocal form, is powerful. A broken woman is perceived as weak, battered, useless, and incapable, among many other low states of Human life, effortlessly causing her to think it might be best to lie down and die. The thought represents a desperation to escape a pain more powerful than she. There is, but one superseding power, greater than the pain itself. You take this woman, who loves her kids to the highest degree of unselfishness and give her a hint they’re suffering. A Divine Strength that can’t be seen, perhaps not even felt will ignite a fire within her from miles away. No one in its path will see it coming, not even her. This strength indicates that she will go beyond any limits to protect her offspring even if it means rising to her death. There’s no mountain too high, no fire too crucible, nor a fear she won’t face, to ensure they are safe, both mentally and physically. The best part is, no matter how broken down she appears, or how robbed she may be, no one can take from her, what they don’t know she possesses. Following the exhaustion of all other choices, this strength is activated, only when it’s most necessary. It may never be discovered in a lifetime by many, but you can bet it’s there when you need it most. It’s in every one of us, festering, waiting for what may be the last moments of life or death.
L. Yingling
Just like Trump, America loves to lie about itself, and Americans love to eat those lies up - anything that obliterates our sins, that tells us everything will be okay, that makes us the infallible, gallant protagonist in the story of Earth. We must root out the assumptions we swallow as fact and the facts we deny. We must not just examine but actively counter the disastrous, narcissistic death grip of mediocre white men on our past century's art, media, and politics. We must start telling true stories about who we are, who is free and who is not, what we are doing to the planet.
Lindy West (The Witches Are Coming)
Emotionally abusive men don't go on to have amazing relationships after you leave them. They tell the new wife the same lies about other people and exes that they told you. They use the same games and play the victim to get their way. After the honeymoon stage has worn off and there is nothing exciting to learn about his new love he will become bored. This is when he is back to the same pattern of abuse, which includes securing new narcissistic supply. That new wife will start to wonder why they can't have deep conversations. She will start to wonder why he gets so quick to anger. She will not understand why she is being abused. She will start back down the same road you took to reach his heart. It will be an emotional trip she won't understand because she was too stupid to believe that his long line of broken relationships were because of the women before her. Her arrogance will be her undoing because we both know she is in for the worst ride of her life!
Shannon L. Alder (The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Bible: Spiritual Recovery from Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse)
Their Biggest Fear   What is a narcissist afraid of most? Narcissist who have had some insight into their own disorder will tell you that the biggest fear of the narcissist is BEING FOUND OUT.   They fear that you will recognize their facade. They fear you will realize that much of their bad behavior is intentional. When the narcissist realizes that YOU KNOW the truth about his lack of empathy; that is when you will be cut off, and he will work to turn all of your mutual relationships against you that he can.   I have written several times thus far about how most of the narcissist's motivations and behavior are subconscious. However, – from time to time, the narcissist does recognize, in brief glimpses, the truth about his envious and angry nature. The truth will rise to the surface of his conscience if he allows you to confront him. Therefore you and your voice absolutely must be suppressed. You also must not be allowed access to his other relationships – the ones he can still control, the relationships he still has fooled. For the narcissist, the  easiest way to suppress your voice is to launch a  character attack against you. He decides he must spread lies about you to everyone so that 1) he can explain your sudden absence in his life (He tells everyone that he discovered you were really a mean, hateful person, and he had to cut you off to maintain his own sanity. There is no way he can allow others to think you cut him off – as that would indicate there might be something wrong with him); and 2) he must convince others that you are a terrible, or at least an unstable person – so that if you ever have a chance to talk
Ellen Cole (The Covert Narcissist in the Family: Their Common Tactics, How to Protect Yourself, and Personal Stories)
Narcissistic Supply (noun)-- He liked her but was too ashamed to admit it because she was off limits. So he ran her name down in the mud and made sure everyone would believe that he never cared. However, he kept one foot in her life because that is what obsession is like for a narcissist. They can't let you go, but they won't let others know that they are being immoral. If they can't have you then everyone will think your crazy and no one will ever believe your story. Obsession runs in their veins and they will never give you up. You have become their dirty little secret, their narcissistic supply. They like the rivalry and jealousy they created because it means they are desired by everyone. It doesn't matter if they divorced their ex and got a new woman in their life. That person will be told the same lie about you and they will continue with this obsession that you still care about them. When in reality you loathe their very existence. At the very heart of narcissistic supply is obsession and this deep seeded feeling that they are missing out.
Shannon L. Alder (The Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Bible: Spiritual Recovery from Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse)
The criminal element is contained – held under lock and key – and still it happens. How could it go one without me (us) – is that too narcissistic a mind? What I’m getting at is that, with so many of us locked up, you’d think it would stop. That it continues means that it is you and not me. Tell me about your day, your routine, and what you did at the drugstore when the dumb little girl charged you five cents instead of five dollars. Did you speak up? Are you all so lily-white? The harder it gets to be safe and secure, to trust, to find love and understanding – the more you feel entitled, allowed, even encouraged, to cheat, to lie, to steal, and then later, even to kill. That you are just beginning to feel it now only means you have been lucky for too long.
A.M. Homes (The End of Alice)
The more my own eyes began to open, the more overwhelming grief and anger I felt. With time, education, and support, this awakening turned into a growing strength and hope inside me. This will happen for you, too. Reading this book is going to be incredibly helpful for you as you begin to awaken to the truth of what you have been through. If you have lived with a covert narcissist, you have been held down for a long time. You have experienced the illusion of love, not the real thing. You have been lied to, manipulated, and controlled. You have not been heard or respected. You were devalued and brutally discarded by someone who said they cared about you, but in fact only cared about themselves. You have experienced an insanity-inducing relationship that is difficult to describe.
Debbie Mirza (The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse (The Narcissism Series Book 1))
You have been through a tremendously difficult and painful experience. You have been treated terribly by someone who is selfish and doesn’t care about you. You have been given messages about who you are that are not true. You have been conned, manipulated, lied to, and brainwashed. You have been belittled, talked down to, and treated with disrespect. You were used. You have been emotionally and psychologically abused for years. You have been blamed for things that had nothing to do with you. You have been made to feel like things are wrong with you when they are not. You have been treated in a way that has made you doubt yourself. Someone who does not have your best interests at heart has controlled you. You have experienced the illusion of love, not the real thing. Not even close.
Debbie Mirza (The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse (The Narcissism Series Book 1))
Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explosion; and Hornwrack, dazzled mistaking the light for the smile, suddenly imagined an incandescence which would melt all those old streets! Rue Sepile; the Avenue of Children; Margery Fry Court: all melted down! All the shabby dependencies of the Plaza of Unrealized Time! All slumped, sank into themselves, eroded away until nothing was left in his field of vision but an unbearable white sky above and the bright clustered points of the chestnut leaves below - and then only a depthless opacity, behind which he could detect the beat of his own blood, the vitreous humour of the eye. He imagined the old encrusted brick flowing, the glass cracking and melting from its frames even as they shrivelled awake, the sheds of paints flaring green and gold, the geraniums toppling in flames to nothing, not even white ash, under this weight of light! All had winked away like reflections in a jar of water glass, and only the medium remained, bright, viscid, vacant. He had a sense of the intolerable briefness of matter, its desperate signalling and touching, its fall; and simultaneously one of its unendurable durability He thought, Something lies behind all the realities of the universe and is replacing them here, something less solid and more permanent. Then the world stopped haunting him forever.
M. John Harrison (Viriconium (Viriconium, #1-4))
the legends of friendship and love between man and man, woman and woman, or man and woman, lies this hideous narcissistic image of the single, all-sufficient self, the primitive generative force which fecundates itself, which in its irrepressible ebullience threw off a planetary system that forms the whole corpus of mythological worship and love. “In the beginning was the word and the word became flesh.
Anaïs Nin (A Literate Passion: Letters of Anais Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953)
People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputations. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible. John
Ilona Andrews (Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #1))
In Plain Sight by Stewart Stafford How can I show the real me? My voice breaking as I speak, Parched hope's cracked lips, Delphic in this solitary chic. Vitriol cannot reach my shore, The purge reveals little to hide, Or does rage fester within me? A cannibal cheerleader inside. No father around guiding me, Burnt by mother's acid divide, Cataracts of persona non grata, A transient hat tipped in a lie. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
Stewart Stafford
Him, yes him, this carefree and pathological liar, this cynical pervert, thus everywhere comes within in him, therefore this intense demonic coldness, where his mind is locked up by this intense darkness, and where there lies no humanity in him. Seduction is his game, to lie to satisfy his egotistical character as a narcissistic psychopath. In the end, whatsoever where he sets foot, there comes destruction, malice, betrayal, lies, greed, dupery, disloyalty, in his clothes of an evil charmer.
~Michella Augusta
Common phrases narcissists use and what they actually mean: 1. I love you. Translation: I love owning you. I love controlling you. I love using you. It feels so good to love-bomb you, to sweet-talk you, to pull you in and to discard you whenever I please. When I flatter you, I can have anything I want. You trust me. You open up so easily, even after you’ve already been mistreated. Once you’re hooked and invested, I’ll pull the rug beneath your feet just to watch you fall. 2. I am sorry you feel that way. Translation: Sorry, not sorry. Let’s get this argument over with already so I can continue my abusive behavior in peace. I am not sorry that I did what I did, I am sorry I got caught. I am sorry you’re calling me out. I am sorry that I am being held accountable. I am sorry you have the emotions that you do. To me, they’re not valid because I am entitled to have everything I want – regardless of how you feel about it. 3. You’re oversensitive/overreacting. Translation: You’re having a perfectly normal reaction to an immense amount of bullshit, but all I see is that you’re catching on. Let me gaslight you some more so you second-guess yourself. Emotionally invalidating you is the key to keeping you compliant. So long as you don’t trust yourself, you’ll work that much harder to rationalize, minimize and deny my abuse. 4. You’re crazy. Translation: I am a master of creating chaos to provoke you. I love it when you react. That way, I can point the finger and say you’re the crazy one. After all, no one would listen to what you say about me if they thought you were just bitter or unstable. 5. No one would believe you. Translation: I’ve isolated you to the point where you feel you have no support. I’ve smeared your name to others ahead of time so people already suspect the lies I’ve told about you. There are still others who might believe you, though, and I can’t risk being caught. Making you feel alienated and alone is the best way for me to protect my image. It’s the best way to convince you to remain silent and never speak the truth about who I really am.
Shahida Arabi
The dark triad comprises three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. They all have a malevolent connection: if you have traits of one, you’re likely to share traits with the others. Narcissists have no empathy whatsoever in addition to thinking they are more special than everyone else. Machiavellianism is all about manipulation and the exploitation of others, displaying a total lack of morality as the individual focuses on their own self-interest, and psychopaths are completely remorseless as they pursue their antisocial behaviour.
Lucy Dawson (White Lies)
Hey Pete. So why the leave from social media? You are an activist, right? It seems like this decision is counterproductive to your message and work." A: The short answer is I’m tired of the endless narcissism inherent to the medium. In the commercial society we have, coupled with the consequential sense of insecurity people feel, as they impulsively “package themselves” for public consumption, the expression most dominant in all of this - is vanity. And I find that disheartening, annoying and dangerous. It is a form of cultural violence in many respects. However, please note the difference - that I work to promote just that – a message/idea – not myself… and I honestly loath people who today just promote themselves for the sake of themselves. A sea of humans who have been conditioned into viewing who they are – as how they are seen online. Think about that for a moment. Social identity theory run amok. People have been conditioned to think “they are” how “others see them”. We live in an increasing fictional reality where people are now not only people – they are digital symbols. And those symbols become more important as a matter of “marketing” than people’s true personality. Now, one could argue that social perception has always had a communicative symbolism, even before the computer age. But nooooooothing like today. Social media has become a social prison and a strong means of social control, in fact. Beyond that, as most know, social media is literally designed like a drug. And it acts like it as people get more and more addicted to being seen and addicted to molding the way they want the world to view them – no matter how false the image (If there is any word that defines peoples’ behavior here – it is pretention). Dopamine fires upon recognition and, coupled with cell phone culture, we now have a sea of people in zombie like trances looking at their phones (literally) thousands of times a day, merging their direct, true interpersonal social reality with a virtual “social media” one. No one can read anymore... they just swipe a stream of 200 character headlines/posts/tweets. understanding the world as an aggregate of those fragmented sentences. Massive loss of comprehension happening, replaced by usually agreeable, "in-bubble" views - hence an actual loss of variety. So again, this isn’t to say non-commercial focused social media doesn’t have positive purposes, such as with activism at times. But, on the whole, it merely amplifies a general value system disorder of a “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT HOW GREAT I AM!” – rooted in systemic insecurity. People lying to themselves, drawing meaningless satisfaction from superficial responses from a sea of avatars. And it’s no surprise. Market economics demands people self promote shamelessly, coupled with the arbitrary constructs of beauty and success that have also resulted. People see status in certain things and, directly or pathologically, use those things for their own narcissistic advantage. Think of those endless status pics of people rock climbing, or hanging out on a stunning beach or showing off their new trophy girl-friend, etc. It goes on and on and worse the general public generally likes it, seeking to imitate those images/symbols to amplify their own false status. Hence the endless feedback loop of superficiality. And people wonder why youth suicides have risen… a young woman looking at a model of perfection set by her peers, without proper knowledge of the medium, can be made to feel inferior far more dramatically than the typical body image problems associated to traditional advertising. That is just one example of the cultural violence inherent. The entire industry of social media is BASED on narcissistic status promotion and narrow self-interest. That is the emotion/intent that creates the billions and billions in revenue these platforms experience, as they in turn sell off people’s personal data to advertisers and governments. You are the product, of course.
Peter Joseph
I have been cheated. The file had a few pieces of worthless information about me and some of my performance reviews (which I had to sign– so it wasn’t anything new). The rest were blank pieces of paper, which Oliver obviously put in there to make it look more enticing. It also only briefly mentioned the meeting with Spencer, saying I had shown interest in marketing with a red pen mark at the bottom which said: Accused Marketing Director of being a narcissistic bastard. Follow up? They hadn’t even indicated whose side they were on, which is slightly disappointing.
Emily Harper (White Lies)
Just like Trump, America loves to lie about itself, and Americans love to eat those lies up—anything that obliterates our sins, that tells us everything will be okay, that makes us the infallible, gallant protagonist in the story of Earth. We must root out the assumptions we swallow as fact and the facts we deny. We must not just examine but actively counter the disastrous, narcissistic death grip of mediocre white men on our past century’s art, media, and politics. We must start telling true stories about who we are, who is free and who is not, what we are doing to the planet.
Lindy West (The Witches are Coming)
One of the things necessary for healing to take place is recognizing the truth of the relationship and that person. You experienced so many covert lies; it is incredibly helpful to be able to see clearly. The truth is you were in love with an illusion, with the person they portrayed themselves to be. At first, this is an excruciating realization. You will doubt and wonder if you are overinflating this, if they really are innocent and you’re just scared to move on. You will have a ton of self-doubt. Eventually, with education and support, you will see that your hunch, your inner knowing, is on target. In time the truth that you were in love with an illusion will feel like a relief because truth does set you free. That full realization will validate years of confusion you felt, years of unexplained exhaustion and health issues, years of sexual confusion, years of feeling less than, and years of unhappiness, along with anxiety. You lived in an unsafe environment, were demeaned and devalued for years (decades for some of you; entire childhoods for many of you). You did not experience unconditional love; you did not live with someone who treated you with respect, who cherished you, treasured you, and felt so lucky to have you in their life. No, the truth is you experienced a counterfeit. If this was a spouse or romantic partner, this awakening to the truth is excruciating because you did love that person with all your heart. You were dedicated. You were in 100%. The truth is that you were the lifeforce in the relationship. When you’re really honest with yourself, when you look back with clear vision, that life, that love you gave and felt, was never fully reciprocated.
Debbie Mirza (The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse (The Narcissism Series Book 1))
it feel like this person is only using you? •Does it feel like this person does not really care about you? •Does this person lie to you constantly? •Does this person contradict his own statements or stories? •Does this person take from you and never seem to have the intention of giving back? •Does this person use pity? •Does he make you feel sorry for him too often? •Does this person make you feel guilty or turn the tables and make it appear like you are at fault? •Does it feel like this person is taking advantage of your kindness? •Does this person get easily bored? •Does he seek constant stimulation? •Does he often use flattery to get to your good side? •Does this person make you feel worried? •Does this person make you feel like he is entitled or like you owe him? •Does this person tend to blame others for his mistakes? •Does he refuse to acknowledge his own faults and take the blame?
Clarence T. Rivers (Personality Disorders & Mental Illnesses: The Truth About Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and Narcissists (Personality Disorders, Mental Illnesses, Psychopaths, Sociopaths, Narcissists))
Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. ‘Look at him!’ Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, ‘That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he’s done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!’ Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. ‘That’s not fat,’ he declared, punching himself in the stomach, ‘that’s good healthy meat!’ He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks.
Christopher Isherwood (Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951)
When people have a low vibration they are more reactive and less able to observe and think properly. Trauma, sadness, injustice, apathy and anger, all these things bring a person down to a state from where many never get out. Then because these people can't control themselves, they are constantly reacting to the high energies they feel - pulling them down. They attack the wrong target and fear what they need the most. They literally become antagonistic to higher vibrations. It's in their nature and they can't control that. Neither do they want. They will rationalize "disbelief" and prove you wrong to make you confused before they change, even when they promise to change, because they don't want to. And why would they if they can confuse you? Confusion is a low vibration scheme, and as you go lower in this vibration of lies, you feel more lost and confused about yourself. It then happens that you are forced to abandon any group that vibrates at a low frequency because they insist on making you confused. Certainty - which is not the same as arrogance but is instead the knowing of something to be true -, is a high frequency level. And the creatures of the darkness attack precisely that certainty, by making you feel ashamed of what you know, by calling you a narcissist. You find them in all religions without exceptions. Very few people know what the light is because they have never seen their real face in a mirror when the light is on.
Dan Desmarques
We live in a time I did not think I would see in my lifetime, a time when freedom—and in particular freedom of expression, without which the world of books could not exist—is everywhere under attack from reactionary, authoritarian, populist, demagogic, narcissistic, careless voices; when places of education and libraries are subject to hostility and censorship; and when extremist religion and bigoted ideologies have begun to intrude in areas of life in which they do not belong. And there are also progressive voices being raised in favor of a new kind of bien-pensant censorship, one which appears virtuous, and which many people have begun to see as a virtue. So freedom is under pressure from the left as well as the right, the young as well as the old. This is something new, and made more complicated by our new tool of communication, the Internet, on which well-designed pages of malevolent lies sit side by side with the truth, and it is difficult for many people to tell which is which; and our social media, where the idea of freedom is every day abused to permit, very often, a kind of online mob rule, which the billionaire owners of these platforms seem increasingly willing to encourage—and to profit by. What do we do about free speech when it is so widely abused? We should still do, with renewed vigor, what we have always needed to do: to answer bad speech with better speech, to counter false narratives with better narratives, to answer hate with love, and to believe that the truth can still succeed even in an age of lies. We must defend it fiercely and define it as broadly as possible, so, yes, we should of course defend speech that offends us; otherwise we are not defending free expression at all. Let a thousand and one voices speak in a thousand and one different ways. To quote Cavafy, “the barbarians are coming today,” and what I do know is that the answer to philistinism is art, the answer to barbarianism is civilization, and in any war it may be that artists of all sorts—filmmakers, actors, singers, and, yes, those who practice the ancient art of the book—can still, together, turn the barbarians away from the gates.
Salman Rushdie