Quotes & Sayings About Lies Told About You

So who is Jesus? For me, he's the central character in the greatest story ever told. It's a story about a gradually realizing kingdom that lies inside of us. — Jay Parini

I am suing Lord Beaverbrook for libel and hope for some lovely tax-free money in damages. He has very conveniently told some lies about me. — Evelyn Waugh

When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say 'Guns before butter', while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words. — George Orwell

Forget the myths you have heard about radical feminism, for only some of them are true. Instead, prepare to think about why so many lies are told about this particular brand of feminism, how it acts as a scapegoat for all that is most threatening about our social movement and how any revolutionary movement for change could really ever be anything but threatening. These are the women you were warned about; you can be too. — Finn Mackay

You were gullible," he said. And then, "When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn't eat them. But then I told you that if you ate carrots, you'd get X-ray vision. And you believed me. You believed everything I said."
I did. I really did.
I believed him when he said that carrots could give me X-ray vision. I believed him when he told me that he'd never cared about me. And then, later that night, when he tried to take it back, I guess I believed him again. Now I didn't know what to believe. I just knew I didn't believe in him anymore. — Jenny Han

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. — George Santayana

BAD PEOPLE
A man told me once that all the bad people
Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails
You need; they are really claws, and we know
Claws. The sharks - what about them?
They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men
In black coats who chase you for hours
In dreams - that's the only way to get you
To the shore. Sometimes those hard women
Who abandon you get you to say, "You."
A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.
It doesn't move on its own. Sometimes it takes
A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
Then they blow across three or four States.
This man told me that things work together.
Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;
And a careless god - who refuses to let people
Eat from the Tree of Knowledge - can lead
To books, and eventually to us. We write
Poems with lies in them, but they help a little. — Robert Bly

There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Face, I cannot bear with patience some of the things your Grace says. They are enough to make me suspect that all you have told me about knighthood and winning kingdoms and empires, of bestowing islands and giving me other favors and honors according to the customs of chivalry must all be hot air and lies, and all a cock and bull story or cock and ball story or whatsoever you term it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I don't really care what people say about me. I'm fine with lies and rumors. It's the truth I don't want being told. — Katja Millay

They bought clams and cockles from her, told her true tales of Braavos and lies about their lives, and laughed at the way she talked when she tried to speak Braavosi. — George R R Martin

I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. — Cormac McCarthy

If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies. — David Mamet

The opportunity to deceive others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance casts us onto some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever cross. Few of us are murderers or thieves, but we have all been liars. And many of us will be unable to get safely into our beds tonight without having told several lies over the course of the day.
What does this say about us and about the life we are making with one another? — Sam Harris

Loving my Poet as I do, though, I try hard to understand what a poet is. The first clue lies in the fact that my Poet - every poet - is an insomniac. My own reads or wanders about our apartment for the best part of most nights. She told me she often feels she would give up every poem she's ever written for one good night's sleep. — Naeem Murr

I wondered whether Mrs. Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called slander. — Mark Haddon

And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him. — James Joyce

I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no one to ask. Besides I knew that people only told lies to children-lies about everything from soup to Santa Claus. — Marilyn Monroe

I wonder what Lena is doing now. I always wonder what Lena is doing. Rachel, too: both my girls, my beautiful, big-eyed girls. But I worry about Rachel less. Rachel was always harder than Lena, somehow. More defiant, more stubborn, less feeling . Even as a girl, she frightened me - fierce and fiery-eyed, with a temper like my father's once was.
But Lena . . . little darling Lena, with her tangle of dark hair and her flushed, chubby cheeks. She used to rescue spiders from the pavement to keep them from getting squashed; quiet, thoughtful Lena, with the sweetest lisp to break your heart. To break my heart: my wild, uncured, erratic, incomprehensible heart. I wonder whether her front teeth still overlap; whether she still confuses the words pretzel and pencil occasionally; whether the wispy brown hair grew straight and long, or began to curl.
I wonder whether she believes the lies they told her. — Lauren Oliver

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? — Mark Twain

I met too frankly preposterous, if it weren't for their banal evil, politicians and pastors who told knowing lies about the evils of homosexuality in order to attract bigger flocks to their churches and more votes and power to their corrupt councils. LGBT people seem to be being scapegoated more and more just as at the same time in more enlightened countries more and more freedom to express themselves, marry, be given official intersex status and so on is offered. — Stephen Fry

Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked ... The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life. — John Cheever

The body directly before him, however, was that of a child. The blue of the eyes was now covered in a milky film, giving it its only depth, since all that was behind that veil was flat, like iron shields or silver coins, sealed and deprived of all promise. They were, he told himself yet again, eyes that no longer worked, and the loss of that was beyond comprehension. He would paint this child's face. He would paint it a thousand times. Ten thousand. He would offer the paintings as gifts to every man and every woman of the realm. And each time any one man or woman stirred awake the hearth gods of anger and hate, feeding the gaping mouth of violence and uttering pathetic lies about making things better, or right, or pure, or safe, he would give them yet another copy of this child's face. — Steven Erikson

When you start figuring out how full of shit you are, it's like opening a tunnel to all the lies you've ever told yourself. The tunnel is really deep and scary, but you're suspicious about it and you want to see what's down there. — Allie Brosh

She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on. — Kate Atkinson

The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies
easily checkable, blatant lies
and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men
15 of them are Saudis
and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq
how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O. J. Simpson jurors. — Fran Lebowitz

At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet. — Patricia A. McKillip

And now, Elric had told three lies. The first concerned his cousin Yyrkoon. The second concerned the Black Sword. The third concerned Cymoril. And upon those three lies was Elric's destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction. — Michael Moorcock

The way the kids of immigrants heard about America, you would think it was not down the stairs and out the door but still across the ocean, a distant place where everything is promised and, for hard work, everything is given. From the day he left his parents' house, Abe [Reles] had to know his father was right, that America promises everything, but he also had to know his father was wrong--America gives nothing. Those things that are promised, they cannot be worked for but must be taken, conned away with good looks, obsequiousness, mimicry; or traded for with bit of your soul or the morals of the stories your parents told; or tricked away with lies; or wrested away with brute force. — Rich Cohen

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open. — Muriel Rukeyser

There's no greater perjury than self-deception. Lying to ourselves puts to death our definitive truth. Confronting the lies we've told ourselves, no matter how small, is a difficult endeavor but nothing is more liberating. To be honest with ourselves is the fastest path to self-acceptance. Being authentic about who we are, actually enriches the relationships around us. The truth sets us free and that's no lie. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

Call them stories. When things happen, we invent stories about them. About why they happened. That's all science is, and history - stories about why things happen or happened. They are never, never true - never complete and always at least a little bit wrong, and we know it. But they're true enough to be useful. I doubt our minds could even grasp the whole truth about anything - the nets of causality spread too wide to be held within a single mind. But the stories, the useful lies - we share those and pass them on and when we learn more we improve on them, or when we need different stories for new circumstances, we change them and pretend we always told them that way." Ender — Orson Scott Card

Even a lie told for a good purpose has a way of perpetuating itself, doesn't it? Look at all the trouble I caused by refusing to tell the truth about Sarah's father.
- Nell — Jane Steen

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

And he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. — George Orwell

Like many people, I have a fascination with lies and the people who tell them. I wouldn't say I've never told a lie, but I don't think I've ever told one without both assuming I would be found out and feeling absolutely rotten about it. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

For about four years, I've been telling people I hate sour cream. One time I sent back nachos because they had sour cream on them. I started saying this because a friend I admire hates sour cream. I told him I hated it too so we could have a funny thing in common. — Megan Boyle

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however ofter Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs. — George Orwell

Women are all born with a special, independent organ that allows them to lie. This was Dr. Tokai's personal opinion. It depends on the person, he said about the kind of lies they tell, what situation they tell them in, and how the lies are told. But at a certain point in their lives, all women tell lies, and they lie about important things. They lie about unimportant things, too, but they also don't hesitate to lie about the most important things. And when they do, most women's expressions and voices don't change at all, since it's not them lysing, but this independent organ they're equipped with that's acting on its own. That's why - except for a few special cases - they can still have a clear conscience and never lose sleep over anything they say. — Haruki Murakami

I've been working on my honesty this summer. I've told such a big lie, such a massively irreversible one, that I figure I need to somehow even the score. But the thing about lying is that it's not so easy to stop. Lies need one another, like a school of fish. If you start to separate them, they'll be killed off one by one. Sometimes the only way to keep lies alive is to tell more of them. — Rebecca Serle

I always find the worst lies are told in relationships - I learned to never lie about your happiness in order to save someone's feelings from being hurt. — Kirsten Prout

The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. but I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It don't move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that's what it is. — Cormac McCarthy

I've told so many lies about my age I don't know how old I am myself. — Ruby Wax

But here is what I tell my own daughters, when they start to place all of the magic outside of themselves, when they start to feel like some random dude owns the sun and the moon and the stars:

The world has told you lies about how small you are. — Heather Havrilesky

As I was escorted outside by the officers, my friends looked back at me with blank expressions. I don't think they knew what to say to me. I had lied to them about my home life. They had always been there for me and probably would have understood if I had told them the truth from the start, but it was too late. All the lies I had told them about having a perfect family had been shattered by that one incident. — Jen Naumann

To anyone who thinks eating disorders are something rich, bored white girls do to get attention, I bid you bite me. I have frequent, intense, inappropriate outbursts of anger over the lies little girls are told about what is beautiful. — Stacy Pershall

There were three of these women, separated by short intervals of pain, remorse, and despair. When he and the last one had their final quarrel - she threw the breadboard - he was nearly fifty-five, and he gave up on love, save the memory of it. Always his aim had been marriage. He had never entered what he considered to be an affair, something whose end was an understood condition of its beginning. But he had loved and wanted for the rest of his life women who took him in their arms, and even their hearts, but did not plan to keep him. He had known that about them, they had told him no lies about what they wanted, and he had persisted, keeping his faith: if he could not change their hearts, then love itself would. — Andre Dubus

All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that's hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you're cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you're someone you think you're not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you're plagued by it until you're cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this — David Mamet

He once told an interviewer, "I'm impatient with the past and irritable with the present. The future is where my concern lies, and I'm very optimistic about it. — Sharon M. Moen

For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: 'I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.' Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong. — Donna Leon

The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place. — George Orwell

The average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies — George Orwell

You can't convince yourself! You either believe or you don't believe." (28)

"She say you ask weird questions, but I say you're student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you're lazy, if student ask, you answer!"
"Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adan and Eve!"
"Bullshit! But hey, Ciao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe."
"But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn't believe and told me to ask God into my heart!"
""Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something soo good to help you. Whatever. You know it's lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don't be stupid and fight them, you'll lose." (30) — Eddie Huang

Under dictatorship, people are enslaved but they know it," he told de Mohrenschildt, recalling his days in the Soviet Union. "Here, the politicians constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brainwashing." Oswald worried about the FBI's police-state surveillance tactics. And he believed that America was turning more "militaristic" as it increasingly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries. — David Talbot

When I asked if she read poetry anymore, she said no. she had lost her taste for it. That was how she said it, lost her taste. I asked how that could happen, and she said she agreed with Plato, or at least Plato as summarized for her: that there was something dishonest about it and that he was right to want to banish the poets.

What she mean't, she told me, was that the only reality was life, real life, and that these beautiful versions were lies and she no longer had patience for it. — Daphne Kalotay

Sarah's right. We punish ourselves so much in our own imaginations. We convince ourselves everything we do, everything we think, is wrong.

For eighteen years I've believed what other people told me about what was right and what was wrong. From now. I'm deciding. — Robin Talley

I have never told anyone about this part of my life. Keeping it secret gave me a sense of control over the uncontrollable; unveiling the lies leaves me painfully exposed. — Maggi Myers

Syn closed his eyes as he savored the taste of her body. He'd never made love to a woman who knew anything about him. At least nothing more than the lies he'd told her.
But Shahara had stared into the abyss of his soul and seen the monster that lurked there. And she hadn't run.
Why?
What made her able to see the man when no one else ever had? In this one moment, he would give her anything.
Even his life.
I'm lost.
Lost in a way he'd never been before. Not even with Mara. Shahara made him want to be something more than a drunken thief and a paid killer.
She made him want to be a hero...
Pulling back, he stared at her dilated eyes and saw the ragged pleasure on her face. And as he gazed at her, he realized the truth.
I'm not lost. I'm found. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The best lies about me are the ones I told. — Patrick Rothfuss

He lied all the time, about everything. Even when he didn't need to, even when there was no point. ... Tom's whole life was constructed on lies - falsehoods and half-truths told to make him look better, stronger, more interesting than he was. And I bought them. I fell for them all. ... I wonder whether [I] would have loved the weaker, flawed, unembellished version. I think I would. I would have forgiven his mistakes and his failures. I have committed enough of my own. — Paula Hawkins

The law is agnostic about truth. It's very skeptical of ultimate truth. That's why freedom of speech permits lies to be told. — Alan Dershowitz

Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm. — P.D. James

The wolf Lupa had told him that mortal minds could believe just about anything - except the truth. — Rick Riordan

I've had more misrepresentations than I can handle, and people have told the wickedest lies about me. A lot of them have taken their frustrations out on me, and I don't like that because it can wound. Not necessarily me, but those around me. Journalists can be so bad. — Grace Jones

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.
I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them- an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas. — Laurie Halse Anderson

The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about. — Mark Twain

If I have any complaints about my youth ... one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain - lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives. — Chris Crutcher

Achilles was looking at me. "Your hair never quite lies flat, here." He touched my head, just behind my ear. "I don't think I've ever told you how I like it."
My scalp prickled where his fingers had been. "You haven't," I said.
"I should have." His hand drifted down to the vee at the base of my throat, drew softly across the pulse. "What about this? Have I told you what I think of this, just here?"
"No," I said.
"This surely then." His hand moved across the muscles of my chest; my skin warmed beneath it. "Have I told you of this?"
"That you have told me." My breath caught a little as I spoke.
"And what of this?" His hand lingered over my hips, drew down the line of my thigh. "Have I spoken of it?"
"You have."
"And this? Surely I would not have forgotten this." His cat's smile. "Tell me I did not."
"You did not."
"There is this too." His hand was ceaseless now. "I know I have told you of this."
I closed my eyes. "Tell me again," I said. — Madeline Miller

Why should I mind?" She drummed her fingertips against his knee. "Because you got asked to play baseball, while I got a lecture on circumspection, Jezebels, and leading men into sin?"
"Did you really?" He managed to sound annoyed, fascinated, and amused all at once.
"It's not funny."
"Of course it's not." He was quick to try and placate her. "But we can do something about those lectures real quick. All you have to do is marry me."
Coyote Bluff had too many secrets that weren't hers to share. She couldn't put him in that position. He was a federal marshal. And she'd seen what all the lies her father told had done to her mother. She'd died hating him.
The last remnants of her earlier contentment vanished. "I like my independence."
"Then I guess you'll have to get used to the lectures, Sheriff Jezebel," he replied. — Paula Altenburg