Quotes & Sayings About Lying To Get What You Want

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute. — Nick Hornby

No one can be a sex kitten every day, and anyone who tells you that is lying. — Sofia Vergara

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. — Thomas Jefferson

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company. — Oscar Wilde

I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them. — Augusten Burroughs

I'd always wanted to think that love could heal anything. But I realized lying there, eyes closed, listening to Asher breathe, that really love is what happens when you find out that it can't. — Cassie Alexander

It's not so bad."
Melancholia looked at her. "You're lying."
"I'll get used to it. So will you."
"I ... I don't think I'll be able to."
"I'll be there to help when you need it."
"But I hate you."
Valkyrie smiled. "No you don't."
"No, I do. I want to kill you and stuff."
"We actually became friends in those caves."
"That's not what happened, " said Melancholia.
"We're pals. We're buddies."
"If my wrists weren't in shackles, my hands would be round your throat."
"You want to hug my throat because we're friends. — Derek Landy

She thinks of him lying there, the beautiful moment never arriving, never ruined, never disappointing, over. It must be sublime dwelling in that house of longing, forever poised on desire's trembling tip, before everything is wrecked. — Susan Johnson

I play for the poor man. I try to give a thrill to the lunch bucket fan. I know their plight. I worked in a factory in high school. The poor folk who lay out the hard bread to see a game. That's where my heart lies. The rich don't need heroes. — Leon Wagner

Who do you think is lying to us?" Shevek demanded.
Placid, Bedap met his gaze. "Who, brother? Who but ourselves? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Sister, why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Cage the animals at night?"
"Well ... " She looked up and out through the barred window before answering me."We don't want to, Jennings, but we have to. You see, the animals that are given to us we have to take care of. If we didn't cage them up in one place, we might lose them, they might get hurt or damaged. It's not the best thing, but it's the only way we have to take care of them."
"But if somebody loved one them," I asked, "wouldn't it be a good idea to let them have one? To keep, I mean?"
"Yes, it would be. But not everyone would love them and take care of them as you would. I wish I could give them all away tomorrow." She looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. "But I can't. My heart would break if I saw just one of those animals lying by the wayside uncared for, unloved. No, Jennings. It's better if we keep them together. — Jennings Michael Burch

What I think I know about dating is that you can't take back something you say in a date. You can't lie, and you can't pretend to be someone you're not unless it's not going well and you never see them again. It never works if you try to make yourself seem like someone you're not, and you want to keep dating them. Be yourself. Don't embellish. It will always come back to get you. — Michael Urie

i need you to french me into the fucking dirt. need you to actually care about me and ineed you to know that i just get tired sometimes. need to think that you are a betterperson than i am and never say it. need you here with me, on our literal death mattress,lying perfectly still in the middle of every single consecutive and increasingly sober night


thats all i need, because i know no one ever really says what they really mean and iknow that there exists a world beneath this one where all the things that get left unsaidbecome all the things you really want. its my moms basement, but i cant go back — Heiko Julien

Oh, it's nice to get up in the mornin', But it's nicer to lie in bed. — Sir Harry Lauder

Mirror that lies, mirror that lies, that can't be me in the gorilla disguise. — Jimmy Buffett

Pray on, dear one- the power lies that way — Mary Slessor

Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both. — Ben Jonson

Now don't you ever tell a lie just confide in me
Would you die 4 me? Tell me baby would you ride 4 me? — Tupac Shakur

I don't want to pretend to be a prophet or a saint. I'm very conscious of my limitations. I know my flaws. But I don't like lying. — Norman Finkelstein

This child is not mine as the first was; I cannot sing it to rest; I cannot lift it up fatherly, And bless it upon my breast. Yet it lies in my little one's cradle, And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she 's gone to Transfigures its golden hair. — James Russell Lowell

If Americans loved judicial activism, liberals wouldn't be lying about what it is. Judicial activism means making up constitutional rights in order to strike down laws the justices don't like based on their personal preferences. It's not judicial activism to strike down laws because they violate the Constitution. — Ann Coulter

He [Levi] made standing look vertical lying down. — Rainbow Rowell

Why do you hate yourself?"
And before I know it, Gat is lying on the bed next to me. His cold fingers wrap around my hot ones, and his face is close to mine. He kisses me. "Because I want things I can't have," he whispers. — E. Lockhart

A person is never as quiet as they seem, we are thickly layered page lying upon page behind simple covers. — Deb Caletti

Peter," she began. He looked up at her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. "I love you," she said freely. With Peter, she was laid bare; he extracted her from herself.
Peter didn't know what to say. HIs eyes glimmered, bright and burning. He only let her see them a moment before he turned away. He took a ragged breath.
"What were you doing with Rose anyway" she demanded, asking a lot of him.
Peter darkened again. He turned his back to her, took a step farther into the alley, and said in a dead voice, "I don't have to like her
to get what I want."
"I don't believe you," Valerie said, reaching for his face, again. Peter pulled away from her. "You're lying. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

So, what made you decide to get a cat?
Oh, you know. I nearly had a one-night stand with our professor, but ran away using my imaginary cat as an excuse, and now he might want us to be together together even though it's the worst idea ever, but I kind of don't care either, because my body and probably my heart are telling me it's the best idea ever. So now I need a cat so he won't realize I was lying about the cat because I'm a virgin and chickened out of having sex with him. — Cora Carmack

I don't want her to know the truth about us."
"I'm merely going to explain to explain that I'm not Nathaniel's mistress."
"You can't talk about mistresses to a well-bred Englishwoman. It violates every propriety."
"To speak in a forthright manner violates propriety?" She rose to stare at him with thinly veiled amusements. "No wonder you English lost the colonies. What with all the lying and the 'propriety' and the evasions, how do you ever get anything done?"
As she crossed the box to sit down beside Evelina, he stared after her in fascinated amazement. Americans were mad - that's all there was to it. — Sabrina Jeffries

What we're really sending you to Harvard for is to get a little of the educations that's so good and plenty there. When it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You;ll find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it's about the only things a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away. — George Horace Lorimer

There are two reasons not to tell the truth
becuase lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt. — Jodi Picoult

I'm gone for eight months ... If you feel that it's critical to contact me, that I get involved in your problem, what I want you to do is to lie down. When that feeling goes away, I want you to get up, solve the problem, and then send me an e-mail with the solution. — Bob Davids

Do you ever wonder what it's like to be so angry that you ... And then something happens, and after that, everyone figures that's what you're like, and that's what you're always going to be, and so you just decide to be it? But the whole time you're thinking, Am I going to be like him? Or am I already like him? And then you get angrier, because maybe you are, and you want ...
He stopped. He wiped at his eyes. I'm not lying. My brother wiped at his eyes. — Gary D. Schmidt

Maybe you're sleeping and I suppose I could just say this in the morning, but now I can't sleep and I'm just lying here so I might as well get it over with, and well ... I'm sorry about this afternoon, J.D. The first spill honestly was an accident, but the second ... okay, that was completely uncalled for. I'm, um, happy to pay for the dry cleaning. And, well ... I guess that's it. Although you really might want to rethink leaving your jacket on your chair. I'm just saying. Okay, then. That's what they make hangers for. Good. Fine. Good-bye.
J.D. heard the beep, signaling the end of the message, and he hung up the phone. He thought about what Payton had said - not so much her apology, which was question-ably mediocre at best - but something else.
She thought about him while lying in bed.
Interesting.
Later that night, having been asleep for a few hours, J.D. shot up in bed
He suddenly remembered - her shoe.
Oops. — Julie James

I looked at the book lying on a table. Though not a great reader myself, I knew that those who were - even Nora - could grow testy when one came between them and their books. — Susan Higginbotham

The power and magic of music lie in its intangibility and its limitlessness. It suggests images, but leaves us free to choose them and to accommodate them to our pleasure. — Wanda Landowska

The only thing worse than finishing second is to be lying on the desert alone with your back broken. Either way, nobody ever finds out about you. — Henry Russell Sanders

In the meantime, it is best to grab what wonderful moments you find lying around. — Lemony Snicket

I call her Val because it's short for Valium and I always tell her she needs to take that shit by the bucketful. I wasn't lying when I said she was fucking crazy. — Colleen Hoover

I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned. — George Washington

I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually. — Pirjo Honkasalo

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self. — Johann Gottfried Herder

If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing. — Thomas Merton

Comedy is allied to justice. — Aristophanes

Were she lying crushed under the ruins of a building, were she torn by the bomb of an air raid, so long as she was still in existence she would know that action is man's foremost obligation, regardless of anything he feels ... — Ayn Rand

To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death. — John Lancaster Spalding

It was more the idea that my intimate moments - changing clothes, lying in bed, reading, crying - were all in fact public, available for observation by these strange men. — Piper Kerman

I do not mind lying but I hate inaccuracy — Christopher Fowler

The person who does not make a choice dies in the eyes of the Lord, even though he continues to breathe and to walk about the streets. For a man has to choose, therein lies his strength: in the power of his decisions. — Paulo Coelho

The real essence of any marriage that has struggled, however unsuccessfully, towards happiness, lies in the growth of a wordless understanding that what is acceptable to one partner will be acceptable to the other. — Wallis Simpson

There is nothing worse for the lying soul than the mirror of reality. — Steve Maraboli

Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride. — A.E. Housman

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one. — Henry David Thoreau

Here a pretty Baby lies Sung asleep with Lullabies: Pray be silent, and not stirre The easie earth that covers her. — Robert Herrick

The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright. — Stephen Jay Gould

A liar freely gives his oath — Douglas Malloch

I lie when I drink and I drink a lot, — Dale Watson

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