Deceiving Others Quotes

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. ~ Oscar Wilde

In love, one always begins in deceiving oneself, and one always ends in deceiving others. ~ Oscar Wilde

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman ~ Oscar Wilde

In short, one who loves the illusion of the good is eventually won over to actually loving the good. But how can love of the illusion of the good lead to love of the good itself? If one loves the illusion of the good and enacts this illusion in social intercourse, one might come to appreciate its worth and to love the good itself for its own sake. Correlatively, from the point of view of the spectator, loving the illusion of the good in others may make us act politely in order to become lovable, which leads us to exercise our self-mastery, control our passions, and, eventually, to love the good for its own sake. In this sense, paradoxically, by deceiving others through politeness and social pretence, we in fact deceive ourselves and transform our pragmatic, polite behavior into virtuous behavior: by deceiving others through the pretence of virtue, we foster civil society, and in doing so, deceive ourselves by transforming our pretense of virtue into a disposition for virtue itself. Does not this line of thought recall Pascal's advice to non-believers who would like to believe, but cannot bring themselves to accomplish the leap of faith? "Kneel down, pray, act as if you believe, and belief will come by itself. ~ Slavoj Zizek

When one is in love one begins by deceiving one's self. And one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance." - Oscar Wilde ~ Ashton Cartwright

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all. ~ Elspeth Huxley

We often shed tears that deceive ourselves after deceiving others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others. ~ Horace

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. ~ LeBron James

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. ~ Oscar Wilde

It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived. ~ John Locke

At the end of a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge Faust has to confess:
"I now see that we can nothing know."
That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception. For acquired knowledge cannot be divorced from the existence in which it is acquired. The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something. ~ Rene Descartes

A true master will not deceive an able disciple. You are hampered by the limits you set and no limit can be set on skill. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

It is not hard to deceive ministers, relatives and friends. But it is impossible to deceive Christ. ~ J.C. Ryle

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Within the mind there are no lies-no possibility of deceiving oneself; and yet, somehow we all manage to bypass the safety of truth in pursuit of dangerous desires. ~ Wes Fesler

The wind is awake, pretty leave, pretty leaves, Heed not what he says, he deceives, he deceives; Over and over To the lowly clover He has lisped the same love (and forgotten it, too). He will be lisping and pledging to you. ~ John Vance Cheney

The way of the world isn't the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak, too. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Many deceive themselves, imagining they'll find happiness in change. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Your treason shall be your poison! ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

Man ordinarily lives in loneliness. To avoid loneliness, he creates all kinds of relationships, friendships, organizations, political parties, religions and what not. But the basic thing is that he is very much afraid of being lonely. Loneliness is a black hole, a darkness, a frightening negative state almost like death … as if you are being swallowed by death itself. To avoid it, you run out and fall into anybody, just to hold somebody's hand, to feel that you are not lonely… Nothing hurts more than loneliness.
But the trouble is, any relationship that arises out of the fear of being lonely is not going to be a blissful experience, because the other is also joining you out of fear. You both call it love. You are both deceiving yourself and the other. It is simply fear, and fear can never be the source of love. Only those who love are absolutely fearless; only those who love are able to be alone, joyously, whose need for the other has disappeared, who are sufficient unto themselves…

The day you decide that all these efforts are failures, that your loneliness has remained untouched by all your efforts, that is a great moment of understanding. Then only one thing remains: to see whether loneliness is such a thing that you should be afraid of, or if it is just your nature. Then rather than running out and away, you close your eyes and go in. Suddenly the night is over, and a new dawn … The loneliness transforms into aloneness.

Aloneness is your nature. ~ Osho

Not much to look at, but as with all true beauty it is what's inside that counts. ~ Matt Sewell

Hee that will deceive the fox, must rise betimes. ~ George Herbert

All of us, when it comes to personality, naturally think in terms of absolutes: that a person is a certain way or is not a certain way. But what Zimbardo and Hartshorne and May are suggesting is that this is a mistake, that when we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we're deceiving ourselves about the real causes of human behavior. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I wondered then if there could ever be trust in a relationship based from the outset upon deceiving other people. ~ Catherine Sanderson

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

Appearances may be deceiving. ~ Aesop

In matters of religion, it is very easy to deceive a man and very hard to undeceive him. ~ Pierre Bayle

Stoneville seems like a decent enough chap."
She stifled a hysterical laugh. "Oh, yes, quite decent. We met him in a brothel, and he's blackmailing us into deceiving his grandmother. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

They say that the Soviet delegates smile. That smile is genuine. It is not artificial. We wish to live in peace, tranquility. But if anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

Certainly one of the most important things I learned is that numbers can be deceiving. There is a logic to mathematics, but there is also the underlying human element that must be considered. Numbers can't lie, but the people who create those numbers can and do. As so many people have learned, forgetting to include human nature in an equation can be devastating. ~ Harry Markopolos

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy. ~ Blaise Pascal

To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can. ~ Carl Jung

Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Let not then any one deceive you, as indeed you are not deceived, inasmuch as you are wholly devoted to God. ~ Ignatius Of Antioch

It is sometimes useful to pretend we are deceived, because when we show a deceiving man that we see through his artifices, we only encourage him to increase his deceptions. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Even a fool can deceive a man - if he be a bigger fool than himself. ~ Marjorie Bowen

The problem is that children believe what adults say and once they're adults themselves they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. "Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is" is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true it's too late. The mystery remains intact but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that's left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can't find any meaning in your life and then the better to convince yourself you deceive your own children. ... People aim for the stars and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adultnot to mention the fact that you'd be spared at least one traumatic experience i.e. the goldfish bowl. ~ Muriel Barbery

The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life. ~ Adrienne Rich

Along with romantic love, she was introduced to another–physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover, and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way. ~ Toni Morrison

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

The pathway looks like an easy path, but in reality, looks are deceiving. It's not easy, but the path brings forth the meaning of optimism. The road we travel will have some good and bad, but we have to look for the good in all that we do and in every situation. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. ~ Philip K. Dick

Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin. ~ Seneca The Younger

[ ... ]we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Do I look feeble to you"
"Actually, yes."
"Well, looks can be deceiving. For instance, when I met you, I thought you look reasonably intelligent. ~ Neal Shusterman

Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end. ~ Immanuel Kant

I mention this only to shew that the citations of the most judicious authors frequently deceive us, and consequently that prudence obliges us to examine quotations, by whomsoever alleged. ~ Pierre Bayle

Seek for the endless life in the world, because with death, there remains neither the seeker nor the sought! The other world is altogether an illusion! Stop deceiving yourself; seek for the endless life in the world! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

It's deceiving but true that we rarely see any immediate consequences for neglecting a single installment of time in any arena of life. But if neglect becomes your pattern, you will eventually bump up against our third principle: 3. Neglect has a cumulative effect. You ~ Andy Stanley

I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe