Falsehood

“ 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. ”

“ In proportion to the falsehood in us are we exposed to the falsehood in others. The false plays upon the false without discord; comes to the false, and is welcomed as the true; there is no jar, for the false to the false look the true; darkness takes darkness for light, and great is the darkness. ”

“ By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbors ready to deceive. ”

“ But the sin of falsehood is not confined to those; go through the whole world of business—in town and in country, wherein there is trading and dealing of one man with another—and witness, alas! the fraud and deception that are everywhere practised. See how the whole race is tainted with the foul pollution of falsehood—men selling their souls for a piece of money. The sin is rank, and, like the smoke of blood just shed, ascends to heaven. ”

“ What if falsehood be also one of these embryonic forms of conviction?—Sometimes all that is needed is a change in persons: what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call it lying to refuse to see what one sees, or to refuse to see it as it is: whether the lie be uttered before witnesses or not before witnesses is of no consequence. ”

“ Know you not that, that which is truly false, if it may be permitted me so to speak, all, both gods and men detest?—How do you mean?—Thus: No person is willing to falsify in matters of the highest concern to himself concerning those matters, but fears, above all things, lest he should accept falsehood.—Yet, I understand you not.—You think that I mean something profound. ”

“ I know from what has come to my ears that it has been hinted among them that in spite of my high office I have no respect for the gods.
“The accusation is false, but none the less dangerous for that. Nothing is more difficult than to expose or annihilate a falsehood. It spreads like wildfire, and the clearest demonstration of its falsity fails to reach a tithe of those who believe it. ”

“ How baseless are the structures of falsehood, which we build in opposition to the system of eternal nature! If I should escape undetected from this recess, it will be true that I never saw the face of either of these persons, and yet I am acquainted with the most secret transaction of their lives. ”

“ Men lie, women lie, children lie. Have you watched a band of girls playing at the imitation of school? How cunningly the teacher feigns anger, the pupils naughtiness and sad repentance. Have you observed the plausibility in the inventions of toddling babes to escape imminent chastisement? Falsehood is a normal faculty and equipped with its protective armor, plausibility. ”

“ I say that no person is willing in his own mind to receive or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in error, to possess that which is not true. This is truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and error in the mind itself. What is usually called falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the involuntary possession of that falsehood, an image of later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete sense, deserving the name of falsehood.—Lib. ”

“ Will he come to the consideration of the question impartially, indifferently, and without any wrong bias, or give the painful and revolting truth the same cordial welcome as the long-cherished and favourite prejudice? To say that the truth or falsehood of a proposition is the only circumstance that gains it admittance into the mind, independently of the pleasure or pain it affords us, is itself an assertion made in pure caprice or desperation. ”

“ You are liars!"
We believed our righteousness to be our strongest weapon. We wanted to conquer brute force by the truth. If we persist in this desire, let us not lie; let us not weaken our truth by falsehood. ”

“ May God grant you the spirit of truth to speak that which is holy and right before the Lord and not what is calumnious and defamatory, the offspring of the spirit of falsehood and error. I am writing without words of flattery, to prevent you sowing the seeds of detraction and scandal among your neighbours, and from the desire that you may abstain from such behaviour and do penance for the offences you have committed. ”

“ I say to a degree, for I may as well tell you right here that falsehood is unknown, or, more correctly stated, impossible in the land of the Transparent Folk, for the reason that so wondrously clear, limpid, and crystal-like are, their eyes that the slightest attempt to say one thing while they are thinking another roils and clouds them as if a drop of milk had fallen into a glass of the purest water. ”

“ Falsehood may come draped in the appearance of truth, which is beauty, but that only testifies to the rigid impersonation of truth; falsehood, being hideous, has to come like truth before it can impose. ”

“ It was said by some of the old Prophets that "The people had made lies their refuge, and under falsehood hid themselves." It is an old adage that falsehood will go round the world while truth is getting on its boots. ”

“ When a simple, honest hearted man, sent of God with the truth to the world, shall question the most learned upholders of false theories, the gilding falls off, and falsehood, in all its deformity, stands naked and exposed. ”

“ The power that chains them is ‘falsehood,’ ‘deception.’ The power that frees each link of the human chain is ‘truth.’ The truth is transmitted to people only by the deeds of the truth.
Only the deeds of the truth, which bring the light to each man’s heart, can destroy the chain of deception and remove one man after another out of the compact mass fettered by deception. ”

“ As for the separation of truth from falsehood, and the resemblance which truth has with falsehood, and for the distinction between what is consistent and what is absurd, on both sides, a balance ought to be formed in which every thing may be weighed. ”

“ And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie; for the lie in words is only a kind of imitation and shadowy image of a previous affection of the soul, not pure unadulterated falsehood. ”

“ Contemplated in a languid mood, or without original interest in the subject, that enormity of falsehood fails to strike, which, under circumstances personally interesting, would seem absolutely incredible. The outrage upon the intellect actually obscures and withdraws the outrage upon the facts. ”

“ It comes, in short, to truth wearing the garment of falsehood. But in doing so it enters on a fatal alliance. What a dangerous weapon is put into the hands of those who are authorized to employ falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If it is as you say, I fear the damage caused by the falsehood will be greater than any advantage the truth could ever produce. Of course, if the allegory were admitted to be such, I should raise no objection ”

“ I suppose the writer of the Handbill thought that by throwing this paragraph into the form of an insinuation, and not a positive assertion, he would escape from being branded with the charge of Falsehood, but surely he cannot be ignorant of the fact, that to deceive by the insinuation of a Falsehood is as great a breach of Truth, as to deceive by an actual falsehood itself. ”

“ Truth and falsehood as commonly understood belong to those sharply defined ideas which claim a completely fixed nature of their own, one standing in solid isolation on this side, the other on that, without any community between them. ”

“ Will falsehood conquer truth? பொய்யான பொருளாசை மெய்யான அருளாசையை விலக்குகிறது. The false love of money, will take away the real love of divine grace. பொய்யும் ஒரு பக்கம் பொறாமையும் ஒரு பக்கம். Falsehood on one side, and envy on the other. ”

“ But secret falsehood, which in the Lord's sight is the same as open falsehood,—secret falsehood, under all its various forms of misrepresentation, deception, cunning, is daily and hourly committed by how many? by how many, too, who think that they would scorn to be guilty of a direct falsehood? Look through the business world. ”

“ And if we are truthful in small matters, we can never be false and dishonest in great ones; but if we allow falsehood to take even a small lodging-place in our hearts, it will be a plague-spot that will spread and poison the soul and ruin character. ”

“ If, on the other hand, one utters falsehood formally, through having the will to deceive, even if what one says be true, yet inasmuch as this is a voluntary and moral act, it contains falseness essentially and truth accidentally, and attains the specific nature of a lie. ”

“ But allowing it possible that an individual instance of deceit might be passed over, which, however, he never could allow, yet one successful falsehood, on the plea of doing good, would necessarily make way for another, till the limits which divide right and wrong would be completely broken down, and every distinction between truth and falsehood be utterly confounded. ”

“ What am I to think of you who by corrupting the sacred writings contrive that their evidences should not have the force of evidences? A new kind of audacity, which strives by its impious arguments to manage that truth may seem to confirm falsehood. ”

“ How false their promises and pledges, how evasive, contradictory and mendacious have been their every act and deed, from first to last, we leave to the readers of the daily and weekly press for verification.
An edifice built on falsehood has no moral foundation, and must perish of its own weight. ”

“ II. The grossest kind of lying, or speaking a known falsehood under the awful solemnity of an oath.—Men violate truth when they affix to words an arbitrary meaning or make in their own minds certain secret reservations with a design to disguise facts and deceive the hearers. When we express doubtful matters in terms and with an air of assurance, we may materially injure as well as grossly deceive our neighbour. ”

“ Fraud and falsehood are his weak and treacherous allies; and he lurks trembling in the dark, dreading every ray of light, lest it should discover him, and give him up to shame and punishment. ”

“ Yet, on the other hand, the arguments in favor of falsehood, put forward by even such a man, ought to be scrutinized with care, in order to ascertain if they are anything more than the familiar arguments on the same side repeated in varying phrase in all the former centuries from Chrysostom to Jeremy Taylor. ”

“ You who have done any dishonest act, spoken falsehood, dealt deceitfully, all your dishonest acts, and false words, and deceitful dealings, will pass away, but the traces will remain, and God will look narrowly at them. ”

“ The dust of controversy, what is it but the falsehood flying off from all manner of conflicting true forces, and making such a loud dust-whirlwind,—that so the truths alone may remain, and embrace brother-like in some true resulting-force! ”

“ Despite the commentators, we must hold to it that the lie, the falsehood is objective and concrete; not lying, or falsehood as a subjective act, habit, or quality,—which would have been rather ψευδολογία (comp. μωρολογία, v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. 2, ψευδολόγων) , or τὸ ψευδές. ”

“ The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood. ”

“ There are some people so naïve in their interpretation of expressed judgments as to suppose that what is told them must be either truth or falsehood, not being able to distinguish a fallacy from a lie. ”

“ Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction. ”

“ Certain critics admit these marvels, but have imbibed the idea that falsehood is so mixed up with the truth, that they cannot be separated but by using certain rules, which they take upon themselves to lay down. ”

“ Meanwhile we have to live to-day by what truth we can get to-day, and be ready to-morrow to call it falsehood. ”

“ And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? ”

“ When I speak of falsehood, I mean every kind; whatever tends to deceive, though not said in direct terms. Tones of voice, motions of the hand or head, if they make another believe what they ought not to believe, are lies, and of the worst kind ”

“ In their mutual accusations, so evidently do they aim at exhausting every topic of obloquy, without the slightest regard to veracity, that it is impossible for the acutest judgment, by the most careful examination of the odious mass of their allegations, to distinguish truth from falsehood. ”

“ Through falsehood, one's words are not heard. Also through falsehood, several women can become widowed, G-d forbid.
2. Through truth, His unity is revealed in the world.
3. When you see a liar, know that the leader of this person is also a liar.
4. Through falsehood, one comes to sexual immorality and spilling of blood, and also causes the upright people to fail in sexual immorality and spilling blood, and he shows permissibility from the Torah. ”

“ Among the false assumptions that are made by many of the advocates of the "lie of necessity" is the claim that in war, in medical practice, and in the legal profession, the propriety of falsehood and deceit, in certain cases, is recognized and admitted on all sides. ”