Deception

“ Deception comes as the snow from heaven. And then, with what art they discover the truth in others! With what shrewdness they employ a direct logic in answer to some passionate question which has revealed to them the secret of the heart of a man who was guileless enough to proceed by questioning! ”

“ Deception is systematized, and iniquity is drawn “as with a cart rope.” But all is like a building upon the sand, or worse,—upon a sea-wave, unless the Lord be with us. The whole is found at last to be a mockery, like the mirage of the desert. ”

“ In this review of the types of deception I have made no mention of such devices as the gaining of one's confidence for selfish ends, preying upon ignorance or fear, acting the friend while at heart the enemy, planned connivance and skilful plotting, together with the whole outfit of insincerity, villainy, and crime. ”

“ Man may deceive his fellow man—deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Saviour, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind! ”

“ It may be justly denominated the intermediate state between the two conditions in human life, over which the evil spirit of deception presides—investing the character with imaginary charms—softening down rugged and uncouth tempers into the smoothness of the most subduing tenderness—curbing restless and ungovernable passions with the restraints of a crafty policy—and giving such a fascination to external graces, that they are received as substitutes for the most solid and substantial virtues. ”

“ Moreover, if the question may be raised: what constitutes justice? may one not equally well ask: what constitutes veracity or its opposite? Where does the silence of indifference shade into purposed concealment, and the latter into what is unequivocally deception? At what point does deception blossom out into the unmistakable lie? One may take advantage of an accidental misunderstanding of what one has said ”

“ Deception is hypocrisy, and you shall not assume to be what you are not.
19. You may not clothe yourselves in special garb to advertise your piety, nor yet assume the tone of voice that men conceive to be a holy voice. ”

“ Yet even into this deception will glide intuition, or the inexplicable insight to character, and the deceiver himself be led to marvel, so true is it that he who flies from Brama goes towards him, let him do what he will, for Truth is everywhere, and even lies lead to it. ”

“ I am a melancholy monument of the sin of deception; and that child who deliberately snatches the reins of control from the hands where God decrees them, and dares substitute her will and judgment for those of parents or guardians, drives inevitably on to ruin, and will live to curse her folly. ”

“ In the actual act of deception, with all their preparations, the dreadful voice, expression, and mien, in the midst of their effective scenery they are overcome by their belief in themselves ; ”

“ Do you not offer them a mortal insult by presenting to them such nonsense as argument? And if your constituents were capable of suffering themselves to be deceived by such unspeakable absurdities, or to accept the insult without resentment, would such an attempt at deception under any circumstances be the part of an honest man? Is there really no blush rising to your cheeks when you look at your performance?
These are the three falsehoods which, when writing my last letter, I selected for exposure from a larger number. ”

“ Strict veracity requires something more than merely the speaking of truth. There are lying looks as well as lying words; dissembling smiles, deceiving signs, and even a lying silence. Not to intend what you speak is to give your heart the lie with your tongue; and not to perform what you promise is to give your tongue the lie with your actions. Deception exhibits itself in many forms—in reticency on the one hand or exaggeration on the other; in disguise or concealment ”

“ Certainly the senses, when taken at face-value, do deceive us: yet the deception resides not so much in them, as in that conceptual world which we insist on building up from their reports, and for which we make them responsible. ”

“ If these gentlemen could by no means be convinced of the deception, must we not presume that there was no deception, and that your peculiar construction of the case was brought about by a strong desire of not being disturbed in your fixed idea that there is nothing but matter? ”

“ Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. ”

“ Those who are attempting, sir, to deceive others, and whose character is exalted, in their own opinion, in proportion to the success of their endeavours, have surely a sense of shame, though they have none of virtue, and cannot, without pain, find their artifices detected, and themselves made the objects of ridicule, by those stratagems which they employ for the deception of others. ”

“ Yet the fashion of the accomplishing of his downfall, the treachery and deception practised towards him by men upon whom he might fairly have believed himself able to count, lend a pathos to the end it might otherwise have lacked. ”

“ The writer of those forms builds up a fabric of deception, as it were, around the real events that hides the truth and makes it seem as tho it were just the opposite—until the grand surprise at the end. ”

“ Such things are being done every day, Ideala, and a man of the world would naturally be on his guard against deception. If he thought he was being deceived, do you think it likely he would feel bound to be scrupulous? ”

“ People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception. ”

“ He had been deceived once by a woman whom he had loved as he now loved Eleanor; and he could not forget that early deception. The shadow that had fallen upon his life was not to be lifted off by any sunshine of trust and love. He had been deceived once, and he might be deceived again.
The wrong which a woman’s falsehood does to the man whom she betrays is a lasting and sometimes irrecoverable wrong. ”

“ That by the lie is meant the intentional deliverance of a conscious untruth for the purpose of deception is as familiar as the variety of opinion concerning the permissibility of so-called necessary lies, of the pious, of the pedagogic, and the conventional. ”

“ Follow out a lie to all its consequences, realise the feelings of the person deceived by it, when he has discovered the deception, above all, consider what would be the result if men were commonly to deceive one another, and no man could place any dependence on the information which his neighbour gave him; and then a falsehood excites very different feelings from what it does when regarded simply as an isolated act. ”

“ TOO LITTLE HONOURED.—Very conceited persons, who have received less consideration than they expected, attempt for a long time to deceive themselves and others with regard to it, and become subtle psychologists in order to make out that they have been amply honoured. Should they not attain their aim, should the veil of deception be torn, they give way to all the greater fury. ”

“ Deception, intrigue, and treachery are everywhere. This is not the time for a formal disquisition on the indications by which a true friend may be distinguished from a false: all that is in place now is to give you a hint. ”

“ We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception." ”

“ It should be pointed out to them with continual earnestness that the essence of lying is in deception, not in words; ”

“ Still I concede that one needs to be upon his guard respecting this class of evidence, for man's love for the marvelous leads him into strange self-deceptions, as also the practice of deception upon others. ”

“ And although they are frequently defeated in their attempts to deceive, and justly punished for their hypocritical villainy, yet the advantage of experience seems to profit them little, and deception, practised under a new garb, often attains its ends. ”

“ Now, don’t raise your eyebrows and draw down your lip-corners, because that really is so. Moreover, they often feel (if they be of a philosophic cast they know) that the deception comes nearer to the truth than the actual bald fact would be. ”

“ The destruction of confidence, resulting from discovered deception, is productive of injurious consequences to the persons deceived. The moment that you are detected in deceiving the sick, you at once impair or even destroy their confidence in your veracity and frankness. ”

“ A familiar instance of deception is exemplified in the false voices which some persons imagine they hear calling them, faintly in common, but so as to deceive for a moment. When this false perception of sound concurs with images of spectral illusion, a formidable imitation of reality is maintained. ”

“ One object of these chapters consists in showing how open everybody is to deception, that nearly everybody “hankers” after it, that solid and solemn realities are frequently set aside for silly impositions and delusions, and that people, as a too general thing, like to be led into the region of mystery. ”

“ Lower a bucket into a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth, mustn't it? ”

“ It is not that these are without interest or are unrelated to the several types of deception above considered, but that they are too complex and too heterogeneous to be capable of ready or rigid analysis. When deception becomes an art of life, consciously planned and craftily executed, there must be acting and subterfuge and evasion to maintain the appearance of sincerity. The psychology of the processes therein concerned is almost coincident with the range of social, intellectual, and emotional influences. ”

“ In addition to the want of effect due to emotional conclusions reached regardless of objective causes, we find further source of error in the very common cynical belief that there is ultimate strength in deception. ”

“ if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception—and purposely. ”

“ In addition we must recognize the existence of deception as the expression of a deep-seated instinct abnormally present in not a few persons. It is deception for the love of imposing upon humanity, mingled somewhat with a love of the conspicuousness and interest which the deceiver's position brings with it ”

“ Deception, if not practised by lying and therefore not intended but simply suffered to occur, and if there be grave reason for resorting to this means of defense, cannot be put down as a thing offensive to God or unjustly prejudicial to the neighbor. ”

“ Many [67] persons, among the large number congregated there, were disappointed and indignant at the discovery that it was not a cheat. A very large number of people were present on this occasion, and a portion of them seemed determined that the cause of the deception, or the manner of its performance, should be ascertained and exposed. They predetermined that there could be no honesty unless it came in their old beaten track of belief. ”

“ Many persons who cannot conscientiously assent to what is said, assume a look of sympathy or approval, which sufficiently answers the purpose of deception, and at the same time escapes all risk of discovery as such. ”

“ It may be a “fact” that some great wise and eminent man states that he took such and such precautions, “never let the plates (or slides) out of his sight,” and so forth, but it is necessary to take into account, along with such statements as this, other facts about the psychology of deception, the reliability of witnesses, the potentialities of fraudulent methods and so forth which are usually ignored by enthusiastic devotees of the subject. ”

“ Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people. ”

“ If there be error, it lies with the deceiver, not the deceived. And you, my sons and disciples, banish from your faces and your breasts every expression and every thought unworthy of your honest companion, and your upright sect. For remember, if to abhor falsehood and vice be noble, to distrust truth and innocence is mean. ”