Deceiver Quotes

Every great writer is a great deceiver ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Deceit and falsehood, whatever conveniences they may for a time promise or produce, are, in the sum of life, obstacles to happiness. Those who profit by the cheat distrust the deceiver; and the act by which kindness was sought puts an end to confidence. ~ Samuel Johnson

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver! a decay, A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never. ~ William Shakespeare

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive. ~ Sissela Bok

Drink was the most fearsome of deceivers ... for it promised one thing and came through with quite another. ~ Kay Boyle

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. ~ Hannah Arendt

Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver. ~ Sophocles

The deceiver loses when there is correct response from the deceived... ~ Bipan Chandra

Fossey, Fossey, you cranky difficult strong-arming self-destructive misanthrope, mediocre scientist, deceiver of earnest college students, probable cause of more deaths of the gorillas than if you had never set foot in Rwanda, Fossey, you pain-in-the-ass saint, I do not believe in prayers or souls, but I will pray for your soul, I will remember you for all of my days, in gratitude for that moment by the graves when all I felt was the pure, cleansing sadness of returning home and finding nothing but ghosts. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

We are our own aptest deceiver. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

God wants us to worry about our sins before we sin; the devil wants us to worry after we sin. God wants us to feel free after we repent (for we really are free then); the devil is a deceiver). The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil's friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us close to God is the devil's enemy and our friend. ~ Peter Kreeft

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us. ~ Vincent Voiture

There are no such self-deceivers as those who think they reason when they only feel. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

My emotions split into an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle. I was smooth edges, crooked edges, and awkward corner edges.
I was cutthroat and fierce, betrayer and deceiver, loved and lover. ~ Pepper Winters

Old age can be a deceiver. My knees ache when I walk, but if I sit still, I do not feel so different from the girl I was. ~ Phyllis T. Smith

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted. ~ William Hazlitt

The easiest person to deceive is one's self. ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

I to my perils Of cheat and charmer Came clad in armour By stars benign. Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine. The thoughts of others Were light and fleeting, Of lovers' meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady, So I was ready When trouble came. - A. E. HOUSMAN ~ Elizabeth Frank

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale. ~ Samuel Johnson

What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion
~ Thomas Mann

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. ~ H.L. Mencken

It is also important to notice that Satan enters the biblical scene as part of God's creation. This means that he is not all powerful. He is only alive because God gives him life. He is a deadly deceiver, but his power is infinitely less than God's power. So we shouldn't be terrified of Satan's power, but we do need to be wary of his lies and manipulation. ~ Francis Chan

Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there are some individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: The parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seemed to have vanished completely. ~ Neil Gaiman

[I]f my faith depends on fear of punishment, what will happen to my faith when perfect love (Jesus) comes to cast it out? (1 John 4: 18) If God thinks that fear of punishment is something to be "cast out" like a demon, then our Gospel and our preaching better not rest on that foundation! Fear-based faith (a paradox) is the ultimate deception. We need to examine closely whether the devil has been hiding in plain sight - squatting within the very message that we've preached. Parasite and deceiver that he is, he found the ultimate host to help disseminate his terror campaign - the Church! If our faith message begins in fear, as it did for many evangelicals like me, it's in trouble. I am reminded of Jesus' warning, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are" (Matt 23:15). The negation of negation. Does preaching on hell produce converts? Oh yes! But if in the process it also saddles someone with fear of punishment, then it has simultaneously reproduced a "son of hell. ~ Bradley Jersak

It is possible to live the Christian life just on the surface, knowing only enough to carry on an intelligent conversation in the church foyer with another equally uninformed believer, but when that happens you are vulnerable to the attack of the deceiver. ~ David Jeremiah

These flattering mirrors reflect imperfectly what is within; the countenance is often a gay deceiver. What defects of mind lie hidden under its beauty! What fair exteriors conceal base souls! ~ Pierre Corneille

Mass was like grand opera, a magic show with the most expensive props in town. And faith, a sleight of hand trick, in which one was both the magician and the audience; the deceiver and the deceived. Still, who could resist a good magic trick? ~ Kathleen Tessaro

Abhor flatterers as you would deceivers; for both, if trusted, injure those who trust them. If you admit as friends men who seek your favor for the lowest ends, your life will be lacking in friends who will risk your displeasure for the highest good. ~ Isocrates

The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our 'deceivers' than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced. ~ Marston Bates

I pastiche, I quote, I lie. Fake, forge, forage, fabricate, copy, borrow, transform, steal. I illusion. I'm a genuine deceiver, a shy sham artist. ~ Shawna Lemay

He belongs to a whorehouse, not in my heart ~ Munia Khan

What heavenly power lends an ear
To a breaker of oaths, a deceiver? ~ Euripides

We want our way like David with Bathsheba
We are dreamers we are schemers like Jacob the deceiver
But You meet us at the river and You show us a good fight
Then You bless us and You name us and You make morning of our night ~ Carolyn Arends

I had thought I loved Mildrith, but that was lust, though for a time I had believed it was love. Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love ~ Bernard Cornwell

Says he, 'I am a handsome man, but I'm a gay deceiver'. ~ George Colman

Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress. ~ Jeffrey Tucker

A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of the deceiver. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Ho said, 'I do not grieve because my feet have been cut off. I grieve because a precious jewel is dubbed a mere stone, and a man of integrity is called a deceiver. This is why I weep.' ~ Orson Scott Card

He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore. ~ Peter Benchley

It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself! ~ Soren Kierkegaard

The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life, ~ Ted Haggard

One can generally say this about men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain; and while you work for their good they are completely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons when danger is far away; but when it comes nearer to you, they turn away. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain ... [love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons. ~ Robert Greene

This was the sickness of the age, the revolutionary madness of the epoch. In thought everyone was different from his words and outward show. No one had a clear conscience. Each with good reason could feel himself guilty, a secret criminal, an unexposed deceiver. ~ Boris Pasternak

Deceivers are the most dangerous members of society. They trifle with the best affections of our nature, and violate the most sacred obligations. ~ George Crabbe

I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery ... Oedipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust, regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver! ~ Joseph Conrad

If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

sura 3.28 of the Koran that, "We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them." And, of course, there was sura 3.54, which declared that the best deceiver of all was Allah himself. ~ William R. Forstchen

Memory is a great deceiver: it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure. ~ Tobsha Learner

One can make this generalization about men: they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit; while you treat them well, they are yours. They would shed their blood for you, risk their property, their lives, their children, so long, as I said above, as danger is remote; but when you are in danger they turn against you. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

He cannot be a deceiver, since the light of nature teaches us that fraud and deception necessarily proceed from some defect. ~ Rene Descartes

If our subject persuades himself to believe contrary to the evidence in order to evade, somehow, the unpleasant truth to which he has already seen that the evidence points, then and only then is he clearly a self-deceiver. ~ Herbert Fingarette

Oh, Philippe, thou are a rogue."
"So I have been told. Presumably because I am innocent of the slightest indiscretion. Curious. No one dubs you rogue who so fully merit the title. But I, whose reputation is spotless, am necessarily a wicked one and a deceiver. I shall write a sonnet on the subject."
"Ah, no!" begged Saint-Dantin in alarm. "Your sonnets are vile, Philippe! So let us have no more verse from you, I pray! ~ Georgette Heyer

Hope is the great deceiver. Hope is the piper who leads us sleepy to our slaughter. ~ Brent Weeks

It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious, virtuous, with real manhood, hardworking and sincere. Besides all these qualities, he was lenient with others, tolerant, kind, cheerful and praiseworthy and perhaps he would joke and tease his companions. He was just, truthful, smart, pure, magnanimous and present-minded; his face was radiant as if he had lights within him to illuminate the darkest of nights; he was a great man by nature who was not educated in a school nor nurtured by a teacher as he was not in need of any of this. ~ Thomas Carlyle

If you are of the truth, if you have learned the truth, if you see the sanctity of the truth, then speak truth. We are not called to be deceivers or liars. God is a God of truth, and His people are called to have an enormously high standard of truth. ~ R.C. Sproul

Venus, the first star, has appeared, another child is born and the stream runs on. Water must be a celestial element for it has neither time nor history stamped upon it and is as constant as the tides of the sea or the rising of the Moon. I long for such constancy, be it in life or in comradeship. Memory is a great deceiver; it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure. I have a noble spirit but I want to live. Tell me how to live and who to live for. I fear I shall surrender too much in love and then survive to regret it. ~ Tobsha Learner

But we are such deceivers that we will not look at ourselves in relationship, because there the real face can be seen. So we close our eyes to relationship, and we go on thinking that something is going to be seen inside. You cannot see anything inside. ~ Rajneesh