Little Lie Quotes & Sayings

You don't stare the devil in the eyes and come out without some of his sin. You can't beat the devil without becoming like him. You can't appeal to his kindness, so you have to learn to play his games. You lie, you fuck, you manipulate, you fight, you hurl insults, until you do whatever it takes to win the battle. Every time you do those things, you understand him a little more. Until finally, he becomes your ally. You think you've won, that you've made him more like you. But the truth is, it's the other way around. So that even when you win, you've lost. — Nina G. Jones

Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person. — Brenna Yovanoff

If I were to tell this story the way history is usually written or the way each of us recalls his own past, which means recording only the most glorious moments and inventing a new continuity for them, I should omit these little details and say that our eight stout hearts drummed from morning to night in time with a single all-encompassing desire - or some such lie. But the flame that kindles desire and illuminates thought never burned for more than a few seconds at a stretch. The rest of the time we tried to remember it.
Fortunately the demands of daily work, in which each of us had his vital role, reminded us that we had come aboard of our own free will, that we were indispensable to one another, and that we were on a ship - that is to say, in a temporary habitation, designed to transport us somewhere else. If anyone forgot it, someone else lost no time in reminding him. — Rene Daumal

My friend, I went to the market and bought the Dark One.
You claim by night, I claim by day.
Actually I was beating a drum all the time I was buying him.
You say I gave too much; I say too little.
Actually, I put him on a scale before I bought him.
What I paid was my social body, my town body, my family body, and all my inherited jewels.
Mirabai says: The Dark One is my husband now.
Be with me when I lie down; you promised me this in an earlier life. — Mirabai

We're done, this is over. I'm packing your shit and you're leaving." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "Everything is fucked up, don't you get that? It's ruined, all of it is ruined and you need to fucking leave." I'm so sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "You need to get a life." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "All those sad, pathetic letters." I'm lying, don't believe me, please don't believe me. I loved your letters, I kept them all and I cherish every one of them. "I prefer women with a little more experience." I don't mean it. I don't mean any of it. Knowing I'm the only man who has ever been inside of you makes me feel like a fucking king and the luckiest man alive. I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "It doesn't get better when I come home to you. I hate this life." I'm lying! Every word is a lie. I love our life and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I love you, I love you, I love you. — Tara Sivec

I am so weak that I can hardly write, I cannot read my Bible, I cannot even pray, I can only lie still in God's arms like a little child, and trust. — Hudson Taylor

You see and hear that they lie," said Ivan Ivanovitch, turning over on the other side, "and they call you a fool for putting up with their lying. You endure insult and humiliation, and dare not openly say that you are on the side of the honest and the free, and you lie and smile yourself; and all that for the sake of a crust of bread, for the sake of a warm corner, for the sake of a wretched little worthless rank in the service. No, one can't go on living like this. — Anton Chekhov

These two archetypal principles lie at the foundation of the contrasting system of East and West. The masses and their leaders do not realize, however, that there is no substantial difference between calling the world principle male and a father (spirit), as the West does, or female and a mother (matter), as the Communists do. Essentially, we know as little of the one as of the other. In earlier times, these principles were worshiped in all sorts of rituals, which at least showed the psychic significance they held for man. But now they have become mere abstract concepts. — C. G. Jung

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky
And I must think a little of the past:
When I was ten I told a stinking lie
That got a black boy whipped ... — Allen Tate

Which means I have to lie to her on a daily basis, which is in itself enjoyable but a little degrading at the same time — Kathryn Stockett

Note well! Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, always denounced as a lie: they disown it, cast it off, throw it on the parish; whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural: the little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, - the honest, lawful bantling, all the cuffs. Such — Charlotte Bronte

We do and say useless and pointless stuff and words, if we think little deeper why we go and masturbate?? (No,... No don't change the page... don't close it or whatever do.... look me right in the face and listen it's not a shit... it's how the matrix is build)... well... let's start from here... we masturbate and after all in the other day or after few days we will do it again..., we eat food and after all we eat again and again until we die... we say useless words and after all who in the hell to know why, we do that???

But after all from this useless words comes the one useful story if the useless words didn't exist... it won't also exist the advange called itself "story". — Deyth Banger

I also enjoy canoeing, and I suppose you will smile when I say that I especially like it on moonlight nights. I cannot, it is true, see the moon climb up the sky behind the pines and steal softly across the heavens, making a shining path for us to follow; but I know she is there, and as I lie back among the pillows and put my hand in the water, I fancy that I feel the shimmer of her garments as she passes. Sometimes a daring little fish slips between my fingers, and often a pond-lily presses shyly against my hand. Frequently, as we emerge from the shelter of a cove or inlet, I am suddenly conscious of the spaciousness of the air about me. A luminous warmth seems to enfold me. Whether it comes from the trees which have been heated by the sun, or from the water, I can never discover. I have had the same strange sensation even in the heart of the city. I have felt it on cold, stormy days and at night. It is like the kiss of warm lips on my face. — Helen Keller

Santa Claus was white and everything bad was black. The little ugly duckling was the black duck, and the black cat was the bad luck. And if I threaten you, I'm going to blackmail you.I said, 'Momma, why don't they call it 'whitemail'? They lie too.' — Muhammad Ali

I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it's flying; the next it's tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face. — Jeremy Clarkson

All you've got to do is lie there a few minutes and die a little. — Joseph Heller

One day a few houses appeared," said Toshaway. "Someone had been cutting the trees. Of course we did not mind, in the same way you would not mind if someone came into your family home, disposed of your belongings, and moved in their own family. But perhaps, I don't know. Perhaps white people are different. Perhaps a Texan, if someone stole his house, he would say: 'Oh, I have made a mistake, I have built this house, but I guess you like it also so you may have it, along with all this good land that feeds my family. I am but a kahuu, little mouse. Please allow me to tell you where my ancestors lie, so you may dig them up and plunder their graves.' Do you think that is what he would say, Tiehteti-taibo?"
That was my name. I shook my head.
"That's right," said Toshaway. "He would kill the men who had stolen his house. He would tell them, 'Itsa nu kahni. Now I will cut out your heart. — Philipp Meyer

I didn't have time to lose it. I didn't have time to lie down in the corner shop and scream and beat the floor until my hands bled. I didn't have time to miss Jack. Stroma kept on chattering away and getting excited over novelty spaghetti shapes and finding the joy in every little thing, and it occurred to me even then that she was probably looking after me, too. — Jenny Valentine

Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton ... I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by ... If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations ... What do you think you see, Linus?"
"Well, those clouds up there look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean ... That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor ... And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen ... I can see the apostle Paul standing there to one side ... "
"Uh huh ... That's very good ... What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?"
"Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind! — Charles M. Schulz

Once a Big Lie was let out in the world, it seemed to grow on its own and needed little tending or worry to bend to the situation. — Scott Lynch

I thought I would love you forever - and, a little, I may,
in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent,
or reach for a man: as one might stretch
for the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the top
of the tree; too ripe for any moment but this,
they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness,
sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since,
the answering yes. — Jane Hirshfield

The categories used in psychiatric diagnosis are based on observation of signs and symptoms, rather than on pathological processes. One can make use of a few signs, such as facial expressions associated with depression or the flight of ideas associated with mania. But what clinicians mainly use for diagnosis are symptoms, the subject experiences reported by patients. Psychiatrists have little knowledge of the processes that lie behind these phenomena. Thus psychiatric diagnoses, with very few exceptions, are syndromes, not diseases. — Joel Paris

Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. — Ernest Hemingway,

It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way
a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved. — Dan Chaon

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him - my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper. — Henry David Thoreau

I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that's such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself. — David Rakoff

You are so high in the tree.
If you jump
you will live a full life
while falling.
You will get married
to a hummingbird
and raise beautiful part-
hummingbirds.
You will die of cancer
in mid-air.
I will not lie. It will be painful.
You are a brave little boy
or girl. — Zachary Schomburg

But Moominpappa wasn't listening, because just at that moment he had got the right grip on a big round boulder, and with a great thud it rolled down the slope. It made two very clear sparks and left a faint but enchanting smell of gunpowder behind. Now it was lying at the bottom, just where it should lie. It was wonderful to roll stones, first pushing with all one's might, then feeling them beginning to move just a little at first
then a little more
and then giving way and rolling into the sea with a colossal splash, leaving one standing there trembling with effort and pride. — Tove Jansson

I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases. — Virginia Woolf

The pleasant converse of the fireside, the simple songs of home, the words of encouragement as I bend over my school-tasks, the kiss as I lie down to rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and approvals, the sympathy that meets and assuages every sorrow, and sweetens every little success
all these return to me amid the responsibilities which press upon me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven, and, straying, had lost my way. — J.G. Holland

After a long moment I closed the freezer door. I wanted to lie down and press my cheek against the cool linoleum. Instead I reached out with my little finger and flipped the Barbie's head. It went thack thack against the door. I flipped it again. Thack thack. Whee. I had a new hobby. — Jeff Lindsay

Pity," Magnus said, closing his eyes again. "It would be nice if you could just lie down with me here. Just ... for a little while. — Cassandra Clare

His smile faded a little, growing softer, more intimate, like the look he'd showed her in bed this morning. 'You haven't learned yet when to lie.' Slowly, as if the words were being dragged from him, he added: 'I confess, Nell, I hope you never learn.' She found herself staring at him. Unsteadying thought: there was something hot in his eyes that wasn't purely want. It was too tender, too ... affectionate. — Meredith Duran

A great fire at night always has a thrilling and exhilarating effect. This is what explains the attraction of fireworks. But in that case the artistic regularity with which the fire is presented and the complete lack of danger give an impression of lightness and playfulness like the effect of a glass of champaign. A real conflagration is a very different matter. Then the horror and a certain sense of personal danger, together with the exhilarating effect at night, produce on the spectator (though of course not in the householder whose goods are being burnt) a certain concussion of the brain and, as it were, a challenge to those destructive instincts which, alas, lie hidden in every heart, even that of the mildest and most domestic little clerk ... .This sinister sensation is almost always fascinating ... of course, the very man who enjoys the spectacle will rush into the fire himself to save a child or an old woman ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There would be little reason to lie down at night without the possibility of seeing things bigger and more amazing than the average day might bright about. Why pick up a pen or type on a keyboard if there's no imagination or wonder left to behold? I would hate to be in the position of hoping for nothing simply because my brain can no longer dream. — Obert Skye

It was a lie, of course, and she was prepared to confess it to her priest. But she'd be damned if she'd tell him she'd been playing with his music.
Her pride was worth the penance.
He felt a quiver in his heart that he took for sympathy. "There, Brenna darling. Have you gone and fallen in love on me?"
She jerked, whirled, gaped at him. He was watching her with such - such bloody affection, such patience and sympathy. She could have beaten him black and blue. Instead, she just shoved clear of him and snatched up her toolbox. "Shawn Gallagher, you are truly a great idiot of a man."
With her nose in the air and her tools clanking, she stalked out.
He only shook his head, then went back to his cleaning up. With that little quiver around his heart again, he wondered who it was that O'Toole had set her sights on.
Whoever, Shawn thought, slamming a cupboard door just a little too forcefully, the man had better be worthy of her. — Nora Roberts

Did we win?" Salan asked as Karol stood. "Hell yes, we did," Karol said, glad that he didn't have to lie to say it. "You just stay there and wait your turn. And don't get impatient. We don't rush the cunning men for pinpricks and scrapes." "Be all right with me if they rushed a little, sir. — Daniel Abraham

Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway. — Joseph O'Neill

Jordan loomed over her and a flash of light blinded her momentarily. The knife. Shane felt her newfound courage faltering, felt herself falling back through the years, into the body of that little girl.
No.
She closed her eyes, pictured Matt's face, Gram's face, and felt her strength returning. She would not let Jordan terrify her again. She might fail tonight, she might die, but she would not be his whimpering victim.
Opening her eyes, she braved the flashing glare of the hunting knife he held above her face. She willed her body to lie still as she stared straight into his eyes. With a thrill of triumph, she saw the surprise in the gray eyes that stared back at her.
Neither of them spoke a word, but they both knew the final moves in the game were at hand, and that Shane had just altered the rules. She could see the dawn of awareness in his eyes: She was no longer a mere pawn to toy with as he pleased.
On the other hand, he still had the knife. — Jane Taylor Starwood

Ula thought that unicorns might sleep in grassy glades with ferns for covering. In summer they might lie on a lawn. We walked round quietly on hands and feet, shaking imaginary horns. Ula pawed the air looking solemn; she made little humming sounds. Being fond of moonlight it was probable that they sang at night. They would eat rose petals with jam, and a little fruit in the summer months. — Ursula Holden

Obsession is such a naughty word - it's a very intense word. I'm obsessed with music, always have been. I can't lie. And I'm obviously obsessed with my child, my child's life and the little things that he does. — Kate Hudson

Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A depleted account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I will tell you a little secret about archaeologists, dear Reader. They all pretend t be very high-minded. They claim that their sole aim in excavation is to uncover the mysteries of the past and add to the store of human knowledge. They lie. What they really want is a spectacular discovery, so they can get their names in the newspapers and inspire envy and hatred in the hearts of their rivals. — Elizabeth Peters

After the dark I shall live again, and there will be women. The future holds the little women for me in the lives I am yet to live. And though the stars drift, and the heavens lie, ever remains woman, resplendent, eternal, the one woman, as I, under all my masquerades and misadventures, am the one man, her mate — Jack London

We are so dependent on luck, good and bad. I think of those men and women - cases faintly parallel to mine - who live in one room and eat poorly and lie in bed, since their incomes are too small for any marked activity. Their lives would be unbearable were it not for their hopes of good luck and fears of bad. They have, in fact, little of either; but illusion magnifies what there is. — Geoffrey Household

Well did the traveler know those garden lands that lie betwixt the wood of the Cerenerian Sea, and blithely did he follow the singing river Oukranos that marked his course. The sun rose higher over gentle slopes of grove and lawn, and heightened the colors of the thousand flowers that starred each knoll and dangle. A blessed haze lies upon all this region, wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than other places hold, and a little more of the summer's humming music of birds and bees; so that men walk through it as through a faery place, and feel greater joy and wonder than they ever afterward remember. — H.P. Lovecraft

I'd stand in line for Confession with old people and little kids, and as the line moved up, I knew when I got into the box that I would lie! Again! — Mercedes McCambridge

[Touching his own breast.] In here, you see - in here I have a little bramah-locked casket. And in that casket all my sculptor's visions are stored up. But when she disappeared and left no trace, the lock of the casket snapped to. And she had the key - and she took it away with her. - You, little Maia, you had no key; so all that the casket contains must lie unused. And the years pass! And I have no means of getting at the treasure. — Henrik Ibsen

These records, however much or however little of real life may lie at the back of them, are not
an attempt to disguise or to palliate this widespread sickness of our times. They are an attempt to
present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. They mean, literally, a journey through hell,
a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of a world whose souls
dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end
to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full. — Hermann Hesse

I lie there for a while in the dusk, then make a decision, little knowing how it will affect every facet of my life and fiber of my being for the rest of my life: I say no to shame. — Alan Cumming

The silence of the storm weighs heavily
On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say
Some trivial thing as though to ward away
Mysterious powers, that imminently lie
In wait, with the strong exorcising grace
Of everyday's futility. Desire
Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire,
Defined and hard: If he could kiss her face,
Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand
Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand?
Or is she pedestalled above the touch
Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek
From her that little, that infinitely much?
And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. — Aldous Huxley

The truth hurts for a little while. A lie hurts forever. — Ryan Bigge

Abe shook his head, and now the smile was gone altogether. "That's not the reason either. Don't lie to me little girl."
I felt my hackles going up. "And don't interrogate me, old man. — Richelle Mead

[T]horoughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. - Carl Jung, Stages of Life — Marianne Williamson

I want to kiss your forehead; my love now is so evolved. I want to hold your hand and see all the little marks and nicks and find out how they happened. I want to assimilate myself in your identity, to have my existence intertwined with yours. I want to know what all stories still lie hidden in you.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

If four or five guys tell you that you're drunk, even though you know you haven't had a thing to drink, the least you can do is to lie down a little while. — Joseph M. Schenck

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. — Denis Diderot

I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground. — Brenna Yovanoff

By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger. — C.S. Lewis

I didn't believe her, of course. The lie was transparent - it something that size, someone would have mentioned it during the door-to-door
and it went straight to my heart as no sonata ever could have; because I recognized it. That's my twin brother, his name's Peter, he's seven minutes older than me ... Children - it and Rosalind was little more - it don't tell pointless lies unless the reality is too much to bear. — Tana French

There is this to be said for Dachsunds of such length and lowness as Nelly, that it makes very little difference to their appearance whether they stand, sit or lie. — Samuel Beckett

This little theater of mine has as many doors into as many boxes as you please, ten or a hundred thousand, and behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you. It is a pretty cabinet of pictures, my dear friend; but it would be quite useless to go through it as you are. You would be checked and blinded by it at every turn by what you are pleased to call your personality. You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie. — Hermann Hesse

Everyone believes the world's greatest lie ... " says the mysterious old man.
"What is the world's greatest lie?" the little boy asks.
The old man replies, "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie. — Paulo Coelho

Once upon a time there was a little girl, and she told a lie to her friend's brother so that her friend's brother drove her to the bus station.

She brought with her a bottle of orange soda, fifty dollars (half in change), sparkly slippers, and her cell phone.

He thought he was helping.

So did she. — Holly Black

However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath. — Martin Luther

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

If a pastor's activity in the church is merely a once-a-week attempt to tow the congregation's cargo ship a little closer to eternity, the whole thing comes to nothing. A human life, unlike a cargo ship, cannot lie in the same place until the next Sunday. — Soren Kierkegaard

It's okay,' he says, eyes closed. He's not even awake. 'It's okay.'
He says these words even in his sleep, like he has said them so often that it's his mouth's default sentiment. All this pain in his life, all this care he doles out to everyone else. And yet he still cracks his broken heart open even wider - wide enough to fit me, too. I wonder how much this must hurt him, the toll it just take to give more of himself to me when he already has so little left to give.
In slumber, his arm stays wrapped around me, encasing me for safekeeping. He would protect me even in his unconscious state, as we lie beneath my ceiling's half-painted sky.
This thought is enough to swell my heart - to swell, and to break. — Emery Lord

You weren't going to tell us about Orsay?"
"I didn't say I - "
"You don't get to decide that, Sam. You're not the only one in charge anymore. Okay?"
Astrid had an icy sort of anger. A cold fury that manifested itself in tight lips and blazing eyes and short, carefully enunciated sentences.
"But it's okay for all of us to lie to everyone in Perdido Beach?" Sam shot back.
"We're trying to keep kids from killing themselves," Astrid said. "That's a little different from you just deciding not to tell the council that there's a crazy girl telling people to kill themselves."
"So not telling you something is a major sin, but lying to a couple of hundred people and trashing Orsay at the same time, that's fine? — Michael Grant

Tell me about your day, your routine, and what you did at the drugstore when the dumb little girl charged you five cents instead of five dollars. Did you speak up? Are you all so lily-white? The harder it gets to be safe and secure, to trust, to find love and understanding - the more you feel entitled, allowed, even encouraged, to cheat, to lie, to steal, and then later, even to kill. That you're just beginning to feel it now only means you have been lucky for too long. — A.M. Homes

... if you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible stress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of pity you also harbor another religion in your heart that is perhaps the mother of the religion of pity: the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable and benevolent people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together. — Friedrich Nietzsche

But the important thing is to lie down and fall asleep. That little nap means you wake up fresh again and can continue. — James Levine

Nobody wants to hear that any aspect of my awesome life is bad. I get that. But there are days, maybe two or three times a year, when I get completely overwhelmed by my job and go to my office, lie on the floor, and cry for ten minutes. Then I think: Mindy, you have literally the best life in the world besides that hot lawyer who married George Clooney. This is what you dreamed about when you were a weird, determined little ten-year-old. There are more than a thousand people in one square mile of this studio who would kill to have this job. Get your ass up off the floor and go back into that writers' room, you weakling. Then I get up, pour myself a generous glass of whiskey and club soda, think about the sustained grit of my parents, and go back to work. — Mindy Kaling

You are allowed to lie a little, but you must never mislead. — Paul Halmos

Say that you love me. You don't have to mean it. You can lie. Just say it so I can pretend for a little while
Fen to Malick - Weregild — Carole Cummings

Should we have border security there? Yes. But the idea of the United States erecting a wall for the world to see makes a lie of everything we say about ourselves. It's a little bit like why the President [Barack Obama] and I feel so strongly about closing Guantanamo. It is inconsistent with who we are. — Joe Biden

You can't lie to kids about drugs. They know about drugs. You can't say they're just all bad. They know life is a little more complicated. I have never done heroin. I would never recommend heroin, but it hasn't hurt my record collection. — Bill Maher

Why doesn't he say something to her?
But I knew why. Because there's the creeping fear that these moments don't actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people thing precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all?
We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don't want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It's too perfect. That little second of hope is worth something, possibly for ever, as we lie on out deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and we can't help but quickly give on last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we'd actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando's seventy-four years earlier. — Danny Wallace

Termite, you're young, and I'm not sure if you're going to understand what I'm about to say, but here's the nugget: Without the heart, nothing else matters. She could be the Goddess of Love, you could have all the mind-blowing sex you could physically handle, but when the shooting is over, and you're starting to think about getting a bite to eat, smoking a cigarette, or what you do with her now, you're just lying in bed with a woman who means little more to you than the remote control for your TV. Love is not tool; neither is a woman's heart. What I'm talking about, you won't find in that magazine."
"How would you know? You just said you've only loved one woman. I think you need to test-drive a few cars before you buy one."
"You can buy that lie if you want, but if you're working for a bank, you don't study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit."
Reese talking to Termite, pg. 109-110 — Charles Martin

The saddest thing is a little girl who is told by her own mother and father that she will never be pretty.
And then they open the front door, and on the porch is a little white suitcase, with all of her things in it. — Chris Onstad

He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn't understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased - for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason - without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually - every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept - and those he assimilated at once. — Dezso Kosztolanyi

Everybody that breaks up has a little tally of their victories which they count after the relationship to see how they did; cheating gives you a million tallies and more or less makes the entire relationship a lie. — A.D. Aliwat

Wait: His boyfriend? He was gay? The focus on the lens sharpened, and I could see it clearly now. Of course he was gay. Everyone could see that, except the chubby little lonely heart sitting at seven o'clock, drawing sparkly rainbows on the page with her glitter crayons. I was still beating myself up when the round robin arrived to me, and I sputtered along trying to assemble some phony epiphany with strong verbs, but tears dripped down my face.
The room fell into silence as people waited for me to explain. But what could I possibly say? That I had just discovered my future husband was gay? That I was going to live the rest of my life surrounded by nothing but empty lasagna pans and an overloved cat destined to die before me?
"I'm sorry," I finally said. "I was just reminded of something very painful." And I guess that wasn't a lie. — Sarah Hepola

When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight. — Louis L'Amour

But you can't argue that the world isn't in an unhealthy moral state."
"Wouldn't think of it dearest. People lie, cheat, rape, swindle, kill, maim, torture and destroy. Bad thing. People also pop into bed together and cosy up. Good thing. If we think fucking is a sign of moral decay then we're a little bit stupid-stupid, aren't we? — Stephen Fry

Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, "What!? all this, and Christ too?" What is "all this," compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, "I have no wish at all about it." "But if you might wish, which would you choose?" "I would not choose at all." "But if God bade you choose?" "I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take." Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When your little child tells a lie, do not rush at him as though the world were about to go into bankruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will have liars for his children; do you know that? A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand and weakness upon the other, and when you rush at a poor little boy with a club in your hand, of course he lies. — Robert Green Ingersoll

I see the pricks of blood the spear has left in his shoulder, and when Mutt slides the door shut, I spring on to Mutt and press my little switchblade to his great bulging neck. I can see his skin sucking in with his pulse. My knife lies right next to it. "I thought you said to beat you on the sand," Mutt says. corr slams the wall of his stall with his hooves. My voice hisses out through a cage of my teeth. "I also said ten drops of your blood for every drop of his." I want a pool of his blood around him like the one beneath Edana. I want him to lie against this wall and whimper like she does.I want him to know he'll never stand again. I want him to remember David Prince's death mask as he wears it for himself. — Maggie Stiefvater

I'm not a bad person. I haven't killed anyone. I (rarely) lie. I don't kick little puppies. So why do people look at me as if the world would be a better place without me? — Gena Showalter

I did not survive everything. No one ever does. Little pieces of you - sometimes the best of you - get lost in a little lie here, a little joke there. And of course, the aftereffect is the tiny sob - unseen, unheard, deeply felt. — Carol Grace

I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words. — Hunter S. Thompson

They take little interest in waking life, choosing to lie most of the time in death-like sleep." "Then — Robert E. Howard

He who has once deviated from the truth, usually commits perjury with as little scruple as he would tell a lie.
[Lat., Qui semel a veritate deflexit, hic non majore religione ad perjurium quam ad mendacium perduci consuevit.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Numbers don't lie. You always seem to remember your workouts as being a little better than they were. It's good to go back and review what you do. — Frank Shorter

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie. — Leonardo Da Vinci

You take risks; you get hurt. And you put your head down and plow forward anyway and if you die, you die. That's the game. But don't tell me you're not a hero. You walk away, you're choosing to walk away. Whatever bad things happen as a result, you're choosing to let them happen. You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren't cut out for this. But deep down you'll know. You'll know that humans aren't cut out for anything. We cut ourselves out. Slowly, like a rusty knife. Because otherwise, here's what's going to happen: you're going to die and you're going to stand at the gates of judgement and you're going to ask God what was the meaning of it all, and God will say, 'I created the universe, you little shit. It was up to you to give it meaning. — David Wong

The Adventures of Pinocchio' and would like to have further knowledge to the origins of this puppet. Can you enlighten us)?" Albrecht smiled and replied in English, "My English is not good, but I will do my best to tell the story of a little boy who told lies. Since our friends (indicating to the rest of us) don't speak German, I will tell the story in English." As Mr. Roser related the story of Pinocchio, my guilty conscious began festering, much like Pinocchio's nose and ears growing longer and longer with each lie. As — Young

What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody's free.
And that's what the teacher said to me.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school. — Tom Paxton