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There are no such self-deceivers as those who think they reason when they only feel.
Sep 29, 2025
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.
Memory is a great deceiver: it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure.
Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!
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.'
Welcome, thou kind deceiver! Thou best of thieves; who, with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.
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.
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.
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.
God is not a deceiver, that He should offer to support us, and then, when we lean upon Him, should slip away from us.
Everyone is born sincere and dies deceivers.
Vanity is both a great motivator and a great deceiver.
Imagination is a powerful deceiver.
Whoever has trusted a woman has trusted deceivers.
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.
A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver; the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend; a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.
The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism... the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances.
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.
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.
Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us.
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.
Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
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.
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.
Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.
Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!
People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars.
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.
Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life... 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 is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.
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.
The man was a deceiver. He was deceitful and I will never bite my tongue in saying that. I don't think he was anything but a politician, and he used Negroes to get elected and to get votes.
We saw too much beauty to be cynical, felt too much joy to be dismissive, climbed too many mountains to be quitters, kissed too many girls to be deceivers, saw too many sunrises not to be believers, broke too many strings to be pro's and gave too much love to be concerned where it goes.
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.
One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Life is the art of being well deceived.
Do not let a flattering woman coax and wheedle you and deceive you; she is after your barn.
There is no such thing as a secret among our leaders; communication is very open and honest, and if it's not, then it can become seemingly brutal. You've heard my arguments for love, friends, and authenticity, but there are the deceivers, the manipulators, the control freaks, and the self-appointed teachers in the Body who would love to use our system for their own selfish purposes. We all know the realities of the old sin nature.
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.
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to, grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.
Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.
Drink was the most fearsome of deceivers ... for it promised one thing and came through with quite another.
Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.
Deceivers are the most dangerous members of society. They trifle with the best affections of our nature, and violate the most sacred obligations.
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.
Reciting poetry isn't acting, it's memory work. Actor's are deceivers. People who pretend to be something else for a living aren't right in the head.