Secretive Quotes

• Some animals are secretive; some are shy. A cat is private.

  Leonard Michaels

  Cat, Animal, Shy

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• A person may be very secretive and yet have no secrets.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Secret, May, Persons

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• Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Smart, Men, Generous Man

  A Miscellany of Men "The Miser and His Friends" (1912)

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• Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Funny, Hilarious, 4th Of July

  Poor Richard's Almanac for 1735 and 1741.

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• I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Lying, Want

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

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• I'm so secretive that when someone asks me, Hey, can you keep a secret? I say That's none of your business.

  Demetri Martin

  Secret, Hey, None Of Your Business

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• People are secretive when they have secrets.

  Deb Caletti

  People, Secret

  Deb Caletti (2010). “The Secret Life of Prince Charming”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Solitude

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1981). “Selected Poems”

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• To be reserved, secretive, with a passionate violence that causes suffering.

  Gwen John

  Suffering, Passionate, Violence

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• I have friends who are writers, but we don't tend to talk about literature very much. It's just not part of my process; I tend to be pretty secretive about what I'm working on.

  Donald Miller

  Literature, Process

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• Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Women, Literature, Holmes

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.21

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• It's a subject that is often hidden and very secretive, but it's something which I feel should have a light shone upon it.

  Fern Britton

  Light, Should Have, Domestic Violence

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• Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.

  Helen Thomas

  Thinking, White, House

  Phone interview on "The Majority Report" with Sam Seder, April 2, 2004.

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• First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value.

  Ron Paul

  Money, Creating, Air

  YouTube Channel "voytechs"/"MSBNC - Ron Paul the fed caused the bubble", www.youtube.com. March 20, 2008.

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• Lead the least secretive life you can.

  Susan Shapiro

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Thinking, People, Gossip

  Linda Ellerbee (1987). “"And so it goes": adventures in television”, Berkley Pub Group

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• The theory for admitting accomplice testimony that is uncorroborated is that conspiracy is by its nature secretive and that only the parties to it can know it occurred. But in practice this means the accomplice's guilt is modified to the degree that he can convict the defendant.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Party, Mean, Practice

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• Whoever has received knowledge
  and eloquence in speech from God
  should not be silent or secretive
  but demonstrate it willingly.
  When a great good is widely heard of,
  then, and only then, does it bloom,
  and when that good is praised by man,
  it has spread its blossoms.

  Marie de France

  Men, Doe, Speech

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• Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.

  Lee Salk

  Attitude, Children, Parent

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• There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA.

  Ron Paul

  Running, Country, Military

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• Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same.

  Agatha Christie

  Dog, Book, Writing

  Agatha Christie (1991). “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

  Anne Lamott

  Children, Typewriters, Trying

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• I was modest--they accused me of being crafty: I became secretive. I felt deeply good and evil--nobody caressed me, everybody offended me: I became rancorous. I was gloomy--other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them--but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world--none understood me: and I learned to hate.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Children, Hate, Evil

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• Smooth and ordered on the outside; roiling and chaotic and desperately secretive underneath, but not noticeably so, never noticeably so.

  Caroline Knapp

  Smooth, Chaotic

  Caroline Knapp (1999). “Drinking: A Love Story”, p.11, Dial Press

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• Behind the scenes there is a secretive, undeclared war of revenge that's already under way.

  Lara Logan

  Revenge, War, Behind The Scenes

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