Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Post #3024

A lie has always a certain amount of weight with those who wish to believe it.
—E. W. Rice

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Post #2658

Lies can destroy, but not create.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper

Sunday, June 01, 2014

Post #1562

When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
Men will believe because they love the lie;
But truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
Must have some solemn proof to pass her down.
—Charles Churchill

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Post #1543

Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child, will upon the slightest temptation, tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it.
—Joseph Priestley 

Monday, February 10, 2014

Post #1476

An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered.
—Mark Twain

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Post #1390

He who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.
—Michel de Montaigne

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Post #1347

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Friday, August 02, 2013

Post #1310

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Blaise Pascal

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

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One From the Archives

Post #1234

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied...

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