Lie By Omission Quotes & Sayings

There is no lie. The world is presented as it is. Nothing is concealed, except for perhaps the identity of the Creator, which is not so much a lie as it is a reasonable omission. No view is, however, disguised. No composition of the natural landscape is purposefully twisted or deformed so as to deliberately deceive, and no function of the natural world is dressed in sweet deception. No scream is muffled, no laceration sanitised, and the pain of hunger and thirst are naked for all to see and be sickened by. Diseases of every ghastly flavour are on loathsome display, the blights of parasitism are laid bare, and the crippling agonies of old age are public property. The terror of predation is revealed in every anguished look, the fear of infanticide written on every mother's face, and the misery of earthquakes, landslides, cyclones, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, droughts, heat waves, and wild fires conferred uncensored upon stunned and appropriately intimidated audiences. — John Zande

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? Wake up in the iron dark with the lambs screaming?" "Sometimes." "Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they'd be all right too and you wouldn't wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming? Clarice?" "Yes. I don't know. Maybe." "Thank you, Clarice." Dr. Lecter seemed oddly at peace. — Thomas Harris

Mathematicians - for what they do - are really poorly rewarded. And it's a very competitive field, almost as bad as being a concert pianist. — Gian-Carlo Rota

I'm a coward. A willing coward, complicit in my own fall. I've never told him that I love him, as if refusing to say it aloud would somehow shield us both, but it hasn't. Like an untamed, sentient thing, full of I am and yet estranged from me, my heart discerns its own truth and knows that this omission is a lie. — Tammara Webber

The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up. — Robert A. Heinlein

A life, a history, whole patterns of existence altered, simply by doing nothing. The silent lie. The act of omission. — Aminatta Forna

Often, when people ask me what I read as a young girl, I lie. Or, I should say, I lie by omission. I tell them about my brilliant fourth-grade teacher, Miss Artis, who assigned us 'Johnny Tremain' and 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and 'Tuck Everlasting,' all books that made an impression on me. And people nod in approval. — Cristina Henriquez

As I had been forced to learn at a very young age, there's no better way to mask a lie - or at least a glaring omission - than to wrap it in an emotional outpouring of truth. — Alan Bradley

Because everybody lies. It's part of living in society. Don't get me wrong-I think it's necessary. The last thing anyone wants is to live in a society where total honesty prevails. Can you imagine the conversations? You're short and fat, one person might say, and the other might answer, I know. But you smell bad. It just wouldn't work. So people lie by omission all the time. People will tell you most of the story ... and I've learned that the part they neglect to tell you is often the most important part. People hide the truth because they're afraid. -Jo — Nicholas Sparks

Making love - having sex - with James had been like discovering a lie of omission. She had become more aware of things because of their pronounced absence. — Delphine Dryden

Plus, you'll be healthier. Everyone wins." "I'm healthy. I eat fruit." "In pie doesn't count. — Kylie Scott

Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie. — Jennifer Chiaverini

Companions were not allowed to lie. I don't know why. I had tried a few times when I was young to get Benjamin to lie, and he never could. As we got older, I tried experiments, attempting to find a way for him to lie. Lies of omission, white lies, whoppers. Nothing. He couldn't lie. My father told me that they were programmed that way. He seemed kind of proud about that.
And now, I hoped, that would save my life. — Erma I Talamante

that's a pretty big lie by omission — Carrie Jones

The G.O.P. and the conservative establishment in America are on the verge of a reckoning. — JP Bernbach

I think people moving through space and the way they say lines, it's a puzzle to be solved every time. But there's a right way to do it that feels natural. And it's just kind of finding that right thing. — Timothy Miller

I'm a big fan of the lie of omission. — Gillian Flynn

[T]hey had not taught the boy to lie. But they had not taught him to know truth from lies. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Somehow, our sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long after the sense of injustice in others has been thoroughly aroused. — Max Beerbohm

The moment it was over I knew I shouldn't have done it. It was fucked up on so many levels that it didn't even feel right to hold Dan close to me in what had been our bed less than a month earlier. Dan loved me, I knew he did. It wasn't fair of me to lead him on, even if I had broken up with him just before fucking him. But it wasn't just that, the rest of it wasn't right either. The knowledge of what I no longer was in my family's view but forever, for whoever looked upon me, marked on my body, a lack so fundamental and obvious that some would refuse to call me a man. And what would happen to me because of that, the way my body was even in that moment changing to accommodate someone else's desires, the way I was becoming what Brennan had decided I needed to be. For the first time, it wasn't a mere omission but an outright lie. To be in that bed next to Dan was taking up the space that belonged to someone else, someone we had both loved and who was now gone. That life was over, done. — N.J. Lysk

When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul, as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never wholly outgrown. — Marcel Proust

It is highly dangerous to receive the truths of the Bible with human wisdom, for this is a hidden and subtle method which invariably causes a believer to perfect with his flesh the work of the Holy Spirit. — Watchman Nee

The soul is like a wild animal - tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek. — Parker J. Palmer

The social perception of whether any supposed deficit is the parents' fault is always a critical factor in the experience of both children and parents. The attribution of responsibility to parents is often a function of ignorance, but it also reflects our anxious belief that we control our own destinies. — Andrew Solomon

Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth. — Julianna Baggott

A concealed truth, that's all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered. — Josephine Hart

A lie by omission is just as bad as a lie by commission. — Elizabeth A. Reeves

He manages a sad smile. An omission is not the same thing as a lie, Miss Bishop. It's a manipulation. — Victoria Schwab

Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it. — Robin Hobb