The Deceived Quotes & Sayings

The Secret Revelation of John opens, again, in crisis. The disciple John, grieving Jesus' death, is walking toward the temple when he meets a Pharisee who mocks him for having been deceived by a false messiah. These taunts echoed John's own fear and doubt. — Elaine Pagels

Remember the basic rule. Make friends with your caddie and the game will make friends with you. How true this is. It is easy to arrange that your guest opponent shall be deceived in to undertipping his caddie at the end of the morning round, so that the news gets round among the club employees that your opponent is a no good, and the boys will gang up against him. — Stephen Potter

You find your genius by looking in the mirror of your life. Your visible image shows your inner truth, so when you're estimating others, what you see is what you get. It therefore becomes critically important to see generously, or you will get only what you see; to see sharply, so that you discern the mix of traits rather than a generalized lump; and to see deeply into dark shadows, or else you will be deceived. — James Hillman

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments which can be used for their destruction. And certainly they would never consent to be so used were they not deceived. To avoid this they should be instructed to a certain degree. — Thomas Jefferson

O Woe to his blinded soul! Saying this, he as it were said to God: "Thou Thyself are guilty, because the woman whom Thou gavest me hast deceived me." This very same thing I myself now suffer, wretched and miserable, when I do not desire to be humbled, and to say with my whole soul that I myself am guilty of my perdition. But on the contrary I say: "That person over there inspired me to do or say this. He advised me and knocked me off the path." Woe is my poor soul which speaks such words filled with sin! O most shameless and irrational words of a shameless and irrational soul! — Symeon The New Theologian

One by one, members of the Commons, speaking in turn at a lectern in the center of the chamber, added their charges and complaints. The King's councillors, they said, had grown rich at the cost of impoverishing the nation; they had deceived the King and wasted his revenues, causing the repeated demands for fresh subsidies. The people were too poor and feeble to endure further taxation. Let Parliament discuss instead how the King might maintain the war out of his own resources. — Barbara W. Tuchman

When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow. — Washington Irving

Frowning, Lillian stared at her sister's small ivory face, with its intelligent dark eyes and brows that were a shade too strongly marked. Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that the person most willing to join her reckless adventures was also the one who could most easily recall her to reason. Many people were often deceived by Daisy's frequent moments of whimsy, never suspecting the bedrock of ruthless common sense beneath the elfin facade. — Lisa Kleypas

The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains. Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied. This is partly because the audience is also a court against which there is no appeal. — Iris Murdoch

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

So your theory would seem to be that lying to yourself is no lie at all because you haven't deceived any third party. And if you then convince yourself of those lies, you'll believe them enough to repeat them to other with the genuine conviction that they're true."
"Something like that," I conceded uneasily. — Zack Love

The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction. — Edward Gibbon

As much as we want to deny it, betrayal and pain - whether real or imagined - are part of life. We can choose to grow past it or allow it to hold us tethered to the moment of our injury forever. Because one person chose the latter, we have all been deceived. But the time is coming when their deception and control will be exposed. No one can hold fire to their chest and not eventually be burned. — Michelle Bolanger

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived. — Ben Macintyre

But she just tried to push the blame off onto the serpent: "The woman said, "the serpent deceived me, and I ate" Gen 3:13. That was true enough 1Tim 2:14, but the serpent's guilt did not justify her sin. Again, James 1:14 stands as a reminder that whenever we sin, it is because we are drawn away by our own lust. No matter what means Satan may use to beguile us into sin -- no matter how subtle his cunning--- the responsibility for the deed itself still lies with the sinner and no one else. Eve could not escape accountability for what she had done by transferring the blame. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Small steps may appear unimpressive, but don't be deceived. They are the means by which perspectives are subtly altered, mountains are gradually scaled, and lives are drastically changed. — Richelle E. Goodrich

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. — Hannah Arendt

You should know that there is present with you the angel whom God has appointed for each man ... This angel, who is sleepless and cannot be deceived, is always present with you; he sees all things and is not hindered by darkness. You should know, too, that with him is God. — Anthony The Great

The journey begins, though, with understanding what it means to be a christian. To say you believe in Jesus apart from conversion in your life completely misses the essence of what it means to follow him. Do not be deceived. — David Platt

The readiness with which women are apt to forgive the men who have deceived other women; and that inconsiderate notion of too many of them that a reformed rake makes the best husband, are great encouragements to vile men to continue their profligacy. — Samuel Richardson

What then is the source of my errors? They are owing simply to the fact that, since the will extends further than the intellect, I do not contain the will within the same boundaries; rather, I also extend it to things I do not understand. Because the will is indifferent in regard to such matters, it easily turns away from the true and the good; and in this way I am deceived and I sin. — Rene Descartes

But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming. — Rene Descartes

Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I feel jerked around. I feel sympathetic. I feel abused. It's almost harder to see Nathaniel on the good days than the bad, because you let yourself be deceived into thinking he's going to stay that way ... And I can't just walk away. Part of it is the desire to follow through on something that's become more important and meaningful in my life, and to satisfy the human instinct to help someone less fortunate. And maybe there's something more. — Steve Lopez

During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived. — Thomas Jefferson

The spiritual consciousness is never deceived — Billy Meier

Nothing is more interesting than repressed emotion. The appearance of sardonic coldness and stoicism which has deceived you is but a hollow mockery; beneath it I secrete a maelstrom of impassioned feeling and a mausoleum of blighted hopes. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Ignorance is avoiding that which stands in front of me out of the misplaced hope that it will put what I'm ignoring behind me. Instead, it's most certain to drop it on top of me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been so deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth. — Pablo Picasso

It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most. — Marguerite Duras

Deceivers are the most hideous creatures in the world — Munia Khan

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself; ... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all. — Soren Kierkegaard

You heard him say it? 'Pain's the only evil I know about.' You heard that?"
The monk nodded solemnly.
"And that society is the only thing that determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?"
"Yes."
"Dearest God, how did those two heresies get back into the world after all this time? Hell has limited imaginations down there. 'The serpent deceived me, and I did eat. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Of all forms of deception self-deception is the most deadly, and of all deceived persons the self-deceived are the least likely to discover the fraud. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Always keep Ithaca in your mind. To arrive there is your ultimate goal. But do not hurry the voyage at all. It is better to let it last for many years; and to anchor at the island when you are old, rich with all you have gained on the way, not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches. Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage. Without her you would never have set out on the road. She has nothing more to give you. And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what Ithacas mean. — Paulo Coelho

What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me. — John Knowles

Now I say that a heart that has no grace, and is not instructed in this mystery of contentment, knows of no way to get contentment, but to have his possessions raised up to his desires; but the Christian has another way to contentment, that is, he can bring his desires down to his possessions, and so he attains his contentment ... The world is infinitely deceived in thinking that contentment lies in having more than we already have. Here lies the bottom and root of all contentment, when there is an evenness and proportion between our hearts and our circumstances. That is why many godly men who are in low position live more sweet and comfortable lives than those who are richer. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The Bush administration also was not straightforward about the intelligence it had, releasing tenuous information that fit its goal of attacking Iraq. I feel deceived. — Ken Lucas

When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before ... We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy ... to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer. — Daniel J. Boorstin

Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. — Jean-Paul Marat

The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived. — Oscar Wilde

When our knowing exceeds our sensing, we will no longer be deceived by the illusions of our senses. — Walter Russell

You lie, madam, for you do not love me and you have never loved me! What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros... for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have deceived us all! You have taken a shameful advantage of the candid affection of your benefactress herself, who continues to believe in your sincerity while you go about the Opera ball with Red Death!...I despise you!... — Gaston Leroux

As Our Predecessors have many times repeated, let no man think that he may for any reason whatsoever join the Masonic sect, if he values his Catholic name and his eternal salvation as he ought to value them. Let no one be deceived by a pretense of honesty. It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion and morality; but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men or in any way to help them cannot be lawful — Pope Leo XIII

Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction ; they can be deceived by the stories in the women's magazines. — C.S. Lewis

You will live in the midst of economic, political, and spiritual instability. When you see these signs
unmistakable evidences that his coming is nigh
be not troubled, but, "stand ... in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come" (D&C 87:8). Holy men and holy women stand in holy places, and these holy places include our temples, our chapels, our homes, and the stakes of Zion ...
"This preparation must consist of more than just casual membership in the Church. You must learn to be guided by personal revelation and the counsel of the living prophet so you will not be deceived. — Ezra Taft Benson

When self-interest inclines a man to print, he should consider that the purchaser expects a pennyworth for his penny, and has reason to asperse his honesty if he finds himself deceived. — William Shenstone

1 Timothy 2:11-15: Women should listen and learn quietly and submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly. For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. And it was the woman, not Adam, who was deceived by Satan, and sin was the result. But women will be saved through childbearing and by continuing to live in faith, love, holiness, and modesty. — Sarah Coleman

The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

They had been flattered by Korah and his company until they really believed themselves to be very good people, and that they had been wronged and abused by Moses. Should they admit that Korah and his company were wrong, and Moses right, then they would be compelled to receive as the word of God the sentence that they must die in the wilderness. They were not willing to submit to this, and they tried to believe that Moses had deceived them. They had fondly cherished the hope that a new order of things was about to be established, in which praise would be substituted for reproof, and ease for anxiety and conflict. [402] The men who had perished had spoken flattering words and had professed great interest and love for them, and the people concluded that Korah and his companions must have been good men, and that Moses had by some means been the cause of their destruction. — Ellen G. White

The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived. — Karl Marx

If we could imagine such a man, that is a man who could invent the fly and send him out on his mission and furnish him with his orders: Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth and, diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child, settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting, worry and fret and madden the worn and tried mother who watches by the child and humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. — Mark Twain

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe - life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors - the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals. — Osho

It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools. — Giacomo Casanova

Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light. — Thomas Jefferson

Youth leaders, are you holding aloft our standards, or have you compromised them for the lowest common denominator in order to appease the deceived or vile within the Church? Are the dances and music in your cultural halls virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, and of good report (Articles of Faith 13), or do they represent a modern Sodom with short skirts, loud beat, strobe lights, and darkness? — Ezra Taft Benson

Those who seek education in the paths of duty are always deceived by the illusion that power in the hands of friends is an advantage to them. — Henry Adams

In the central cases of physical pain, then, it appears that at least part of what is bad about our condition is the way it makes us feel. Here there seem to be no problems with a purely mental state account, no counterpart to the experience machine that could bring us to think that we are being deceived by mere appearances. [ ... ] If I am suffering physical pain then I can be quite wrong about the organic cause of my affliction, or even about whether it has one, without that error diminishing in the slightest either the reality of my pain or its impact on the quality of my life. — L. W. Sumner

Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals. — Bertrand Russell

The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is graceful in a man to think and to speak with propriety, to act with deliberation, and in every occurrence of life to find out and persevere in the truth. On the other hand, to be imposed upon, to mistake, to falter, and to be deceived, is as ungraceful as to rave or to be insane. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

It's always the 'others' who are deceived. — Marty Rubin

Then I imagine this is how other people feel when they find my pink Post-it. But this one is bright blue and it's written in black Sharpie. It says, You are the silver lining. I love that phrase and the fact that it came from John Milton. "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" So somebody out there thinks I'm the bright side of a dark cloud. — Ann Aguirre

But she had loved her philosopher so strongly that she had made him believe that her body was aroused and ecstatic. Ibn Rushd had been fooled. Men were easily deceived in such matters because they wanted to believe they had the power to arouse. She wanted to make him believe he pleased her. But the truth was that she could give physical pleasure to a man but not receive it, she could only imagine what such pleasure might be like, she could watch and learn, and offer up to her lover the outward signs of it, while trying to fool herself, as well as him, that yes, she was being pleasured too, which made her an actress, a phony, and a self-deceiving fool. — Salman Rushdie

You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."
"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."
"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"
"Yes, sir. Perhaps I am."
"Don't try to deny it."
"I'm not denying it, sir," said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. "I agree with all you've said. — Joseph Heller

You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him. — Niccolo Machiavelli

People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals, and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films showing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords, and invocations. That's fine, people need to give free reign to their imagination and to go through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tradition. — Paulo Coelho

He who seeks beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the Persians are not entirely deceived in their Hafiz, nor the Hindoos in their Kalidasa. — Friedrich Max Muller

Sarah, though, was still sometimes ruled by stark pain, lost to everything else. Grief slipped away, only to attack from behind. It changed shape endlessly. It lacerated her, numbed her, stalked her, startled her, caught her by the throat. It deceived her eye with glimpses of Charles, her ear with the sound of his voice. She would turn and turn, expecting him, and find him gone. Again. Each time Sarah escaped her sorrow, forgetful amid other things, she lost him anew the instant she remembered he was gone. — Kate Maloy

Do not be deceived by the the politeness of the fey. Fey are almost always polite. This does not mean they will not happily remove your head. — Julie Kagawa

One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A mathematician of the first rank, Laplace quickly revealed himself as only a mediocre administrator; from his first work we saw that we had been deceived. Laplace saw no question from its true point of view; he sought subtleties everywhere; had only doubtful ideas, and finally carried the spirit of the infinitely small into administration. — Napoleon Bonaparte

I think people are too often misinformed and, in some cases, deceived. We don't have a full marketplace of ideas in this country that in any way reflects the broad, real range of ideas. — Katrina Vanden Heuvel

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian. — John Updike

My dear child,' said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of Oliver's sudden appeal, 'you need not be afraid of my deserting you, unless you give me cause.'
I never, never will, sir,' interposed Oliver.
I hope not,' rejoined the old gentleman; 'I do not think you ever will. I have been deceived before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless, and more strongly interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature. — Charles Dickens

As the salt flavors every drop in the Atlantic, so does sin affect every atom of our nature. It is so sadly there, so abundantly there, that if you cannot detect it, you are deceived. — Charles Spurgeon

The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time. — Eckhart Tolle

There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

What goes up must come down. But what is up? And what is down? Are you up there looking down on me? Or is it I who has the trick with gravity? Reach for me and I'll reach for you. For in the middle is where grounds stand true. 'Tis not a lie nor a deceived eye, but an understanding between you and I. So I ask again to a friend with a cup, have a drink with me if you know what's up? — Sean F. Hogan

[ ... ]patience is the weapon that forces deception to reveal itself. It is the insurance against being deceived or making wrong decisions. Some things can only be made known by waiting. God takes his time. — Michelle McKinney Hammond

I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about. — Baron De Montesquieu

Gifts are like fish-hooks; for who is not aware that the greedy char is deceived by the fly which he swallows? — Martial

We live in an age when we are no longer surprised that people let us down the only surprise is that we are so constantly willing to allow ourselves to be deceived. — Charles Bukowski

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived ... (Bk2:3) — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is much better to tell the truth than to compromise truth and have someone believe a lie. It is far better they hear the truth now than that they believe they can keep other idols in their life - and then one day, when it's too late, shockingly hear the Master say, "Depart; I never knew you, you who were deceived! — John Bevere

Some one may say, are you not ashamed to be so taken in like a fool? Yes, I should be ashamed, if it had been an open enemy who had so deceived me. But, to my mind, when friend cheats friend, a deeper stain attaches to the perpetrator than to the victim of deceit. — Xenophon

Even if trafficked sex workers initially chose to go abroad to do sex work,
they had been led to believe they would do so under different conditions than the
slavery-like forced prostitution they were eventually subjected to. Following the
definition of the Palermo Protocol, their knowingly entering prostitution does not
make women less of a victim if they are eventually deceived and forced to do
the sex work. — Jan Van Dijk

Don't be deceived into believing you know what time it is. Your watch does not tell you the time; it tells you the history of time. — Ray Noyes

People do not know what Truth is and what false is. Truth knows both Truth and falseness. However, the false know neither the false nor Truth. People do not know what Truth is, nor do they know what they are being deceived by. When they have a bigger mind and become Truth, they will know the wisdom of the world and will live without death. — Woo Myung

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it. — C.S. Lewis

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. — William Shakespeare

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success wears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History. — Victor Hugo

Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection.genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things. — Julia Marlowe

Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me — Marquis De Sade

As children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices. — John Locke

And if you remember the other part of the context is we were then all deceived about the French position and told the French had said they'd veto any second resolution - which wasn't true, we now know. — Clare Short

When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold brilliance of a northern sky. I am being very frank about my husband. He attracted me at those times, and he repelled me too. This man, I told myself when I first met him, is a perfectionist. And he has no compassion. Gratified like all women who find themselves sought after and desired - a mutual love for Sibelius had been our common ground at our first encounter - after a few weeks in his company I shut my eyes to further judgment, because being with him gave me pleasure. It flattered my self-esteem. The perfectionist, admired by other women, now sought me. Marriage was in every sense a coup. It was only afterwards that I knew myself deceived. ("The Chamois") — Daphne Du Maurier