Betrays Quotes & Sayings

For his part, Mendeleev scanned Lecoq de Boisbaudran's data on gallium and told the experimentalist, with no justification, that he must have measured something wrong, because the density and weight of gallium differed from Mendeleev's predictions. This betrays a flabbergasting amount of gall, but as science philosopher-historian Eric Scerri put it, Mendeleev always "was willing to bend nature to fit his grand philosophical scheme." The only difference between Mendeleev and crackpottery is that Mendeleev was right: Lecoq de Boisbaudran soon retracted his data and published results that corroborated Mendeleev's predictions. — Sam Kean

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination. — Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl Of Chesterfield

The removal of religion as history from our schoolbooks betrays the intellectual dishonesty of secular humanist educators and reveals their blind hostility to Christianity. — Tim LaHaye

No one questions the fact that verbal language has to be learned, but the commonplaceness of visual experience betrays art; people tend to assume that, because they can see, they can see art. — Anne Truitt

Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days and makes us waver at another mile, another smouldering village. — Jeanette Winterson

Of course the welfare of our children is a legitimate state interest. However, limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples fails to further this interest. Instead, needlessly stigmatizing and humiliating children who are being raised by the loving couples targeted by Virginia's Marriage Laws betrays that interest. E. S.-T. [the 15-year-old daughter of two of the plaintiffs], like the thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples, is needlessly deprived of the protection, the stability, the recognition and the legitimacy that marriage conveys ... — Arenda L. Wright Allen

Love always betrays its intentions. — Marthe Bibesco

Silence in love betrays more woe - Than words though ne'er so witty; A beggar that is dumb, you know, may challenge double pity. — Walter Raleigh

Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it. — Thomas Jefferson

Who betrays whom first. — Susan Dennard

It was in reading Tristam Shandy that I noticed how it is primarily men who gravitate towards the game-playing self-reflexive style. There is an alienation from emotion in it, a Nervous Nelly fear of letting go and being "exposed." As an attitude towards life, it betrays a perpetual adolescence. Those who hurled themselves after Derrida were not the most sophisticated but the most pretentious, and least creative members of my generation of academics. — Camille Paglia

When he describes woman, each writer discloses his general ethics and the special idea he has of himself; and in her he often betrays also the gap between his world view and his egotistical dreams. — Simone De Beauvoir

The faithful witness, like ... Socrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silent ... He is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet. — John Ralston Saul

Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them. — Edward Weston

I'm like a lion - I roar. If someone betrays me, I won't be a victim. I don't sulk, I get angry.
I go immediately into retaliation. But it always comes from insecurity or pain. — Lisa Marie Presley

The assumption that a whole system can be made to work better through an assault on its conscious elements betrays a dangerous ignorance. This has often been the approach of those who call themselves scientists and technologists. — Frank Herbert

If improv gets reckless, you can feel it. A lot of shows try to do that, I find. When improv is done sloppily. It betrays the story. It can slow down the energy of the story you're telling. — Steve Dildarian

To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness. One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it. — Dennis Prager

Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. 'What did they do to you?'
Some of the Anchorites laugh. Hugo looks back at his long-ago lover. 'They'-he looks about the Chapel-'cured me. They cured me of a terrible wasting disease called mortality. There's a lot of it about. The young hold out for a time, but eventually even the hardiest patient gets reduced to a desiccated embryo, a Strudlebug ... a veined, scrawny, dribbling ... bone clock, whose face betrays how very, very little time they have left. — David Mitchell

He who has loved and who betrays love does harm not only to the image of the past, but to the past itself. — Theodor Adorno

When a man losses faith he betrays a hero — Elizabeth J. Kolodziej

Be silent and safe - silence never betrays you;
Be true to your word and your work and your friend;
Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you,
Nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.
James Jeffery Roche — James McAllister

I have listened to young Indians who said, "Christianity taught me to believe in the possibility of a different world; Marxism showed me how to get it." It does not take more than a generation to discover that Marxism necessarily betrays the hopes by which it lives. — Lesslie Newbigin

Choice betrays character," I said.
"That's not true." Loring moved his finger along the
sheet as if writing his name in cursive. "Eliza, you can't judge a man solely on his actions. Sometimes actions are nothing more than reactions. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

would be stupid to confide your entire plan to one person. It's infinitely smarter to give little pieces of it to each person working with you. That way, if someone betrays you, the loss isn't too great." "Oh," says Uriah. Lynn picks up her fork and starts eating again. "I heard the Candor made ice cream," says Marlene, twisting her head around to see the lunch line. "You know, as a kind of 'it sucks we got attacked, but at least there are desserts' thing. — Veronica Roth

In his bleak mercy, Death forever strips The soul of light and memory, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on mountain-heights a glance behind Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall. — Clark Ashton Smith

Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Feelings aren't good or bad. They're just weak or strong. Love, for example, is weak: someone loves you, you love them back, you're happy for a while, and then it fades away. But if one of those lovers betrays the other, then you have a real emotion - then you have something powerful, something that leaves a mark you'll never be rid of. Betrayal is the most delicious of all, but it takes a while to set it up, and fear can be just as intense if you know what you're doing. — Dan Wells

If the partridge didn't call at the wrong moment, Neither the hunter nor the falcon would know of it. It follows from this point also, That everyone's voice betrays him. — Rahman Baba

Both religiousness and lawlessness share the same problems: overconfidence and unrighteousness. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" we might ask - the very question that betrays our misplaced assumption that we somehow deserve a good life. — Tim Chaddick

US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twenty-first century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, and removals of Indigenous children to military-like boarding schools. The absence of even the slightest note of regret or tragedy in the annual celebration of the US independence betrays a deep disconnect in the consciousness of US Americans. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Seriously? You've never done this for your friends before?" Trent shrugs. He manages to stay straight-faced for another three seconds before a sly smile betrays him. "Yeah, tons of times. But I liked letting you feel me up." A loud chorus of snickers and laughter erupts. They all knew he was playing me. How did they all know and I have no clue? Probably because I'm too busy drooling over his body to notice his practiced movements. — K.A. Tucker

Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy ... — Winifred Holtby

Look at the photographs of Hitler at Nuremberg two years ago, the deadness behind the eyes that denies humanity, just as it betrays the true darkness of the soul.' May — Christopher Fowler

Ford Motor Company's sluggish and piecemeal approach to its automotive responsibilities betrays motorists' safety. — Ralph Nader

Life is a warfare; and he who easily desponds deserts a double duty
he betrays the noblest property of man, which is dauntless resolution; and he rejects the providence of that All-Gracious Being who guides and rules the universe. — Jane Porter

It betrays hubris on the part of the artist to think his medium is limiting him, and I think we all recognize this. — Steve Albini

As soon as a work of art is of practical use, betrays a purpose or a tendency its beauty vanishes. — August Strindberg

In Mere Christianity, no less than in his more fantastical works, the Narnia stories and science fiction novels, Lewis betrays a deep faith in the power of the human imagination to reveal the truth about our condition and bring us to hope. "The longest way round is the shortest way home"2 is the logic of both fable and of faith. — C.S. Lewis

You've told me repeatedly now that you find me blindingly attractive." "That doesn't mean I like you. Besides, your brand of pretty is like a weapon. You reel victims in with it, just like a vampire does. I wouldn't be surprised if you sparkle in the sun." "I cannot believe I'm arguing with a woman who references Twilight." "The fact that you know I'm referencing Twilight betrays you as a secret Edward-loving fanboy." His snort is loud and scathing. "Team Jacob all the way." I can't help it, my eyes fly open, and I lift a corner of my mask to glare at him. "That's it. We can never be friends. — Kristen Callihan

The richness of every European language is a richness in ability to describe its own culture, represent its own world. When it ventures to do the same for another culture, however, it betrays its limitations, underdevelopment, semantic weakness. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors. — D.H. Lawrence

How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The reason I trust so much is that I don't feel like I have anything to hide. If somebody betrays that trust, it could never be so bad, because I don't keep any secrets. — Kate Hudson

When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence. — Simone Weil

You like to claim that you're in charge of the world, but it's as if the world hasn't noticed and it does whatever it pleases in spite of you. You claim the sky is blue, but almost on a daily basis it betrays you. — Trish Mercer

No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days. — Jeanette Winterson

Betrayal is an ironic thing. He or she betrays you then you betray yourself. You think you're showing strength with your anger, but in reality you're showing how much you still care. — Shannon L. Alder

Millions of Americans cannot tell you who lived at Mount Vernon or who wrote the Declaration of Independence - let alone the Emancipation Proclamation. But they know that to be 'a Benedict Arnold' is to be a traitor of the deepest dye - someone who coldly betrays not only a sacred cause but every moral scruple along the way. — Arthur L. Herman

He doesn't back down under my accusations. Instead he leans in, his big frame curving over me like a wave. "I would do all that and more." His tone betrays a carefully restrained ferocity, and I see in him, shifting and fluttering, behind his eyes the monster I've always known is there. It makes my breath catch, the beautiful horror of it. He doesn't try to hide it, if anything he leans in closer, filling my vision until he fills the world. Him and his dark devil's eyes. — Eliza Crewe

Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful; and, contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them. — Henry Fielding

There are three signs of a hypocrite: when he speaks he speaks lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is trusted he betrays his trust. — Elijah Muhammad

While it is true that the taking of life not yet born or in it's final stages is sometimes marked by a mistaken sense of altruism and human compassion it cannot be denied that such a culture of death, taken as a whole, betrays a completely individualistic concept of freedom, which ends up by becoming the freedom of "the strong" against the weak who have no choice but to submit. — Pope John Paul II

Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational. — Frank Herbert

The fear of man is no respecter of persons. It might be called codependency by adults, peer pressure with teens, and shyness with children, but whatever it is called, it all betrays the same idolatrous heart. — Edward T. Welch

So it is with my life, a multilayered and ever-changing fresco that only I can decipher, whose secret is mine alone. The mind selects, enhances, and betrays; happenings fade from memory; people forget one another and, in the end, all that remains is the journey of the soul, those rare moments of spiritual revelation. What actually happened isn't what matters, only the resulting scars and distinguishing marks. My past has little meaning; I can see no order to it, no clarity, purpose, or path, only a blind journey guided by instinct and detours caused by events beyond my control. There was no deliberation on my part, only good intentions and the faint sense of a greater design determining my steps. — Isabel Allende

The fearful face usually betrays great guilt. — Seneca The Younger

This is the one who betrays Forerunners, their own greatest monster. We know this one. Remember? — Greg Bear

Another way in which religion betrays itself, and attempts to escape mere reliance on faith and instead offer "evidence" in the sense normally understood, is by the argument from revelation. On certain very special occasions, it is asserted, the divine will was made known by direct contact with randomly selected human beings, who were supposedly vouchsafed unalterable laws that could then be passed on to those less favored. — Christopher Hitchens

Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Like prepositional phrases, certain structural arrangements in English are much more important than the small bones of grammar in its most technical sense. It really wouldn't matter much if we started dropping the s from our plurals. Lots of words get along without it anyway, and in most cases context would be enough to indicate number. Even the distinction between singular and plural verb forms is just as much a polite convention as an essential element of meaning. But the structures, things like passives and prepositional phrases, constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow.
— Richard Mitchell

Love is not a fire to be shut up in a soul. Everything betrays us: voice, silence, eyes; half-covered fires burn all the brighter. — Jean Racine

One's sentiments
call them that
one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power. — Elizabeth Bowen

But illness does not always write itself upon the body, the sickness I search for is hidden deep within the brain. Sometimes it rises to the surface. Sometimes the face betrays what the body conceals. But there moments, these betrayals, last no longer than an instant. They come, they go, they pass over the patient, darkening and brightening his face like clouds gusting over a meadow. How is it possible, then, to tell what he is suffering when the visible signs of his inner disorder appear so fleetingly upon his face? — Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

All Buddhas preach emptiness. Why? Because they wish to crush the concrete ideas of the students. If a student even clings to an idea of emptiness, he betrays all Buddhas. — Bodhidharma

At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure of, the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. — Theodore Roosevelt

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world? — Philip Yancey

To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstandin g of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear. — David Whyte

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. — James Baldwin

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays. — Margaret Atwood

Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead. — Gore Vidal

What a terrible man, I thought, worse than a traitor. At least a traitor betrays people by telling the truth. Uncle Zhu tried to save himself by telling lies. — Ji-li Jiang

Silence is the true friend that never betrays. — Confucius

Hard work betrays none, but dreams betray many. — Myself

Forgiveness does not come easily to us, especially when someone we have trusted betrays our trust. And yet if we do not learn to forgive, we will discover that we can never really rebuild trust. — Billy Graham

If he betrays you, I will finish what I started with his fingers," he said, and I shivered. "Tell him that. — Kim Harrison

Interest can turn into disgust when the person with whom your are romantically involved, and whose scent you find evocative, betrays you and then, with shocking speed, they just "stink" both literally and figuratively. — Anonymous

If he can give us the Stormcrows, surprise is certain"
"And if he betrays you, suprise is lost. — George R R Martin

Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise. — Jeanette Winterson

Everything large enough to love eventually disappoints you, then betrays you, and finally, forgets you. But the things small enough to fit into a shoebox, these stay as they were. — Anthony Marra

Four characteristics constitute anyone who possesses them a sheer hypocrite, and anyone who possesses one of them possesses a characteristic of hypocrisy till he abandons it: when he is trusted he betrays his trust, when he talks he lies, when he makes a covenant he acts treacherously and when he quarrels he abuses. — Elijah Muhammad

It is the noble races that have left behind them the concept 'barbarian' wherever they have gone; even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it and even a pride in it (for example, when Pericles says to the Athenians in his famous funeral oration 'our boldness has gained access to every land and sea, everywhere raising imperishable monuments to its goodness and wickedness). This 'boldness' of noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in its expression, the incalculability, even incredibility of their undertakings - Pericles specially commends the rhathymia of the Athenians - their indifference to and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction, in all the voluptuousness of victory and cruelty - all this came together, in the minds of those who suffered from it, in the image of the 'barbarian,' the 'evil enemy,' perhaps as the 'Goths,' the 'Vandals. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our nemesis is time, against which we have a single ally, memory, and even it betrays us. — Sam Tanenhaus

Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It betrays a poverty of ambition if all you think about is what goods you can buy instead of what good you can do. — Barack Obama

beware the "slash" - a job listing that advertises for a UX/UI designer betrays a lack of appreciation for the value of UX, and suggests that the organisation is probably actually looking for a UI designer. — Matthew Magain

Kiriwar: "I thought I smelled shit stinking up the hallway."
Shiki: "I butchered a hyena ... maybe that's why. That's what you do to a dog that betrays its master's wishes, right? — Suguro Chayamachi

Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process. — L. Neil Smith

I place an enormous premium on loyalty. If someone betrays me, I can forgive them rationally, but emotionally I have found it impossible to do so. — Richard E. Grant

Men often think submission indicates weakness, that letting someone else take charge betrays a character deficit. But we all submit to strangers who drill into our teeth as long as we can see the parchment on their wall which reads Dentist. — Edmond Manning

There's no Saints; everyone lies. Everybody betrays everybody sooner or later too. The quicker you get that through your head, the better."
From "Hostages — Erik Hansen

The fuel of ambition is not the problem; it is the focus of ambition that frees or betrays us. — Erwin Raphael McManus

All along this path I tread, my heart betrays my weary head, with nothing but my love to save, from the cradle to the grave ... — Eric Clapton

His persistence allowed us to play a game, and pretend that everything can stay as it is now forever. It cannot. The events of this day have shown us what happens when you try to keep things from changing. Sooner or later the sleeplessness catches up with you, the paranoia about threats devours you and your mind betrays you even if your body does not. — Frances Hardinge

If I had imagined for one second that I could believe in love, I saw now that I'd been deluding myself. Because it all ends up the same, whether you love them or not.
Everyone betrays you, in the end. — Ali Cronin

He who betrays other people's trust is the most contemptible man — Khem Veasna

Many who wave American flags also practice discrimination on the basis of race. Many who wave American flags practice anti-Semitism. We think that betrays the fundamental ideals of our democracy. — Billy Campbell

The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. — Nathaniel Hawthorne