Falsehood Quotes - Page 19

• Our respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.

  John Ruskin

  Beautiful, Death, Horse

  John Ruskin (1902*). “Works”

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• Since neither black animosity nor the Left's falsehood of 'racial tensions' is based on the actual behavior of the vast majority of white Americans, nothing white America could do will affect either many blacks' perceptions or the leftist libel.

  Dennis Prager

  America, White, Black

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• I wish I were younger. What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding [evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders.

  C. S. Lewis

  Attitude, Lying, Thinking

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963”, p.138, HarperCollins UK

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• A part of the plan for creating discord, is, I perceive, to make me say things of others, and others of me, wch. have no foundation in truth. The first, in many instances I know to be the case; and the second I believe to be so; but truth or falsehood is immaterial to them, provided their objects are promoted.

  George Washington

  Believe, Creating, Foundation

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1793). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• People who are open about their own faults, especially, often want to ferret out "inner feelings" beneath the surface and expose any falsehood, and they think that it's in their inner feelings that the truth lies. But I don't think that's the truth.

  Mamoru Hosoda

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I'm frequently introduced as a fashion designer, and I quickly say I'm not, and instantly people are incredibly disappointed and think that I'm some sort of charlatan who's been perpetuating this falsehood.

  Tim Gunn

  Fashion, Thinking, People

  "Tim Gunn on interviewing Dolly Parton and going to Woodstock in penny loafers". Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. September 14, 2016.

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• Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Loyalty, Honesty, Cowardice

  Harry Emerson Fosdick (1952). “A faith for tough times”

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• What is truth? What is falsehood? Whatever gives wings to men, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts up a man's height above the earth - that's true. Whatever clips off man's wings - that's false.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Men, Wings, Giving

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien (1988). “The Last Temptation of Christ”, p.477, Simon and Schuster

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• For me, choosing happiness has to be something that's conscious, a choice, something I act on. And I think this is something really difficult in a society where there's this falsehood that there's sunshine everywhere and all you have to do is hook yourself up to it. We're Combodians such an optimistic culture, but sometimes we have to work a lot harder to find it.

  Loung Ung

  Optimistic, Sunshine, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The greatest truth is honesty, and the greatest falsehood is dishonesty.

  Abu Bakr

  Honesty, Truth Is, Caliphs

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• When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Looks, Certain

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1823). “Frankenstein: ; Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.190, DOSER Reads

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• Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated.

  Alveda King

  Spring, Lying, Believe

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• I said you lie, knave!” shouted Beaumains, drawing his sword. “And for telling such craven falsehoods, you must die!” The knight looked plaintively at Roger. “What’s wrong with this fellow?” He was dropped on his head when he was a baby,” answered Roger.

  Gerald Morris

  Baby, Lying, Knights

  Gerald Morris (2008). “The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• the growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humour. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and a third – before long the best lines cancel out – and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the pictures have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping that such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Children, Giving, Wife

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “Three Novels: Tender is the Night; The Beautiful and Damned; Thi”, p.415, Simon and Schuster

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• A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Hypocrite, Men, Epic Poems

  Alexandre Dumas (2016). “ALEXANDRE DUMAS Ultimate Collection: 40+ Titles Including The Three Musketeers Series, The Marie Antoinette Novels, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Valois Trilogy and more (Illustrated): Historical Novels, Adventure Classics, True Crime Stories & Biography (Queen Margot, The Black Tulip, The Queen’s Necklace, Taking the Bastille, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Sicilian Bandit…)”, p.235, e-artnow

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• Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Truth Is, Can Not

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2691, Delphi Classics

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• Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Judging, Purpose, Lasts

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.250, GENERAL PRESS

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• As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind - to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of nature in its narrow terms - runs riot here (in psychoanalysis). Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Running, Mind, Trying

  Sri Aurobindo (2016). “‌‌Bases of Yoga: Art of living”, p.59, editionNEXT.com

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• There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.

  Rollo May

  Stronger, Culture, Definitions

  Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.23, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Waiting required a future to wait for: a falsehood. I know now that there is only now. I remember things that happened months (or what is years?) ago: old -worn-out nows. The future happens, but it is always shaped from a series of nows.

  Kij Johnson

  Years, Waiting, Months

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• Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)

  Howard Gardner

  Loyalty, Integrity, Ethical Principles

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• No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

  David Hume

  Religious, Reality, Miracle

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding "Of Miracles" (1748)

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• It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

  Margaret Fuller

  Determination, Honesty, Reality

  Margaret Fuller (1852). “Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli”, p.64

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• I don't want to lie. I dislike dishonesty. And I work in Hollywood, a town and a business that relies on a lot of falsehoods with people hiding behind different facades. I don't want to be a part of that.

  David Arquette

  Lying, People, Hollywood

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• He who indulges in falsehood will find the paths of paradise shut to him.

  Abu Bakr

  Indulge In, Paradise, Path

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