c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
But people as a rule believe only what they want to believe, and if you tell them anything else they'll call you a trouble-maker and get rid of you and never give you your job back, even if what you said is proved spot on right by time.
— Dick Francis, 10 lb Penalty
Garden design is all about concealment and surprise.
— Andrew   Crofts, Secrets of the Italian Gardener
You can’t walk till the end on an active railway line and you can’t walk till the end on the road of lies, because sooner or later you collide with the truth!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The right sort of lie, I found, could serve better than the truth.
— Adam McOmber, This New & Poisonous Air
Yeah, well all I can say is that a half truth is a still a while lie, ain't it...
— Terry McMillan, The Interruption of Everything
An Important thing : never lie to yourself, for real... worst thing is when you lie to yourself, you just keep doing it and you don't know. 
— Nicky Kastrati
[Rangers] discover the truth though it is surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.
— Ysbeau Wilace
Now, I don't believe that a god exists. I think that gods are creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.
— Clive Barker
In order to discern truth in our hearts, we must unpack the lies". HS/el
— Evinda Lepins
In order to discern truth in our hearts, we must unpack the lies".
— Evinda Lepins
The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
It’s amazing, the lies you can tell yourself. Even more amazing, the lies you can believe when you’re desperate enough.
— Cat Clarke, Undone
It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.
— Baltasar Gracián
Who lies for you will lie against you.
— Bosnian Proverb
A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.
— Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
If you were smart," Genghis said, "you would have borrowed the silverware of one of your friends.""We never thought of that," Klaus said. When one is forced to tell atrocious lies, one often feels a guilty flutter in one's stomach, and Klaus felt such a flutter now. "You certainly are an intelligent man.""Not only am I intelligent," Genghis agreed, "but I'm also very smart.
— Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy
[Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise.
— Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living
Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me.- Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp
— Albert Einstein
For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain -- appreciated "the glad tidings of great joy." For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God."From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good.In the Old Testament, they said. God is the judge -- but in the New, Christ is the merciful. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely worse than the Old. In the Old there is no threat of eternal pain. Jehovah had no eternal prison -- no everlasting fire. His hatred ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was dead.In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal.The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told his disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and yet we are told that this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless, these fiendish words; "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."These are the words of "eternal love."No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite horror.All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in pestilence and famine, in fire and flood, -- all the pangs and pains of every disease and every death -- all this is as nothing compared with the agonies to be endured by one lost soul.This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the justice of God -- the mercy of Christ.This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed.It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge.Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
How do I know you're not crazy?" she asks. "How do I know you're not the craziest dude I've ever met?" "You'll have to test me out." "You have my info," she says. "I'll think about it." "Rain," I say. "That's not your real name." "Does it matter?" "Well, it makes me wonder what else isn't real." "That's because you're a writer," she says. "That's because you make things up for a living." "And?" "And"-- she shrugs--"I've noticed that writers tend to worry about things like that.
— Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms
Sometimes a policeman must confront people about lying. No one likes to be called a liar. But it is what it is! A fact is a fact! If someone is a liar, put them on notice. You should not be punished for doing the right thing. It is the job of a good investigator to get the truth.
— C. Snyder
Lying isn't something you should be proud of, but be grateful if you've gained a talent for doing it correctly.
— Kate C. Conner
To get what we want we must be subtle as snakes; more deadly, more cunning, more patient, more mean. Think of the serpent, how it slithers through the garden. It's such a beautiful creature, slow and delicate, rarely seen but effective, low, and not loved, but gloriously efficient! The serpent is now our model; we must pattern our work after him. So go to your old friends and stand by their sides. Pretend you want to help them while whispering deceits in their ears. Only lie when you have to. Speak the truth when you can; for the truth, once it's twisted, is the most effective tool we have. Coat your lies with enough truth, and they will swallow it down.Now listen to me, people, for this is the key - evil can be twisted into virtue if you phrase it just right. Any vice is acceptable if you cloak it as an issue of freedom. Any immorality is worth fighting for it you tell them they are fighting for choice, if you wrap it in the mantle of privacy and freedom. So take their moral agency and turn it on them. But be patient. . . be patient. . . it takes time to turn the truth upside down.
— Chris Stewart
Let everywritertell hisownliesThat's freedomof thepress.
— Norman Mailer, Deaths For The Ladies
Everyone listened to this amusing narrative with great interest, and the moment that Behemoth concluded it, they all shouted in unison: 'Lies!
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,...,and he had very red hair.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Of course the theologians fought the facts found by the geologists, the scientists, and sought to sustain the sacred Scriptures. They mistook the bones of the mastodon for those of human beings, and by them proudly proved that "there were giants in those days." They accounted for the fossils by saying that God had made them to try our faith, or that the Devil had imitated the works of the Creator.They answered the geologists by saying that the "days" in Genesis were long periods of time, and that after all the flood might have been local. They told the astronomers that the sun and moon were not actually, but only apparently, stopped. And that the appearance was produced by the reflection and refraction of light.They excused the slavery and polygamy, the robbery and murder upheld in the Old Testament by saying that the people were so degraded that Jehovah was compelled to pander to their ignorance and prejudice.In every way the clergy sought to evade the facts, to dodge the truth, to preserve the creed.At first they flatly denied the facts -- then they belittled them -- then they harmonized them -- then they denied that they had denied them. Then they changed the meaning of the "inspired" book to fit the facts. At first they said that if the facts, as claimed, were true, the Bible was false and Christianity itself a superstition. Afterward they said the facts, as claimed, were true and that they established beyond all doubt the inspiration of the Bible and the divine origin of orthodox religion.Anything they could not dodge, they swallowed and anything they could not swallow, they dodged.I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believe in the existence of devils -- talked and made bargains with them. expelled them from people and animals.This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist -- that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
I'm so tired of people who can't be honest. "Beauty is on the inside" Really?? Then why do rich guys & successful guys always end up with beautiful women but they have lousy personalities?.
— Colin Cowherd, You Herd Me!: Things About Sports and Life I Think but Probably Shouldn't Say
Lies are like anchovies in a Caesar salad. You may not be able to see them, but your soul knows they are there.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
They were Catholic, my lovers,All in an access of crossing themselves,Particularly their fingersBehind their suspendered backs--And that was the women.
— Shay Caroline, Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn
A house made of ice in the middle of desert! And that house is the house of lies!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
I have to admit that I'm feeling a little anxious these days. We've all been lied to so much. There's just all this uncertainty we're facing...I mean, what if the hokey-pokey ISN'T what it's all about?
— Vernon Crumrine, Miracles & Mischief: Meringue for Your Brain
...the terrible crumple and blanch of a lie come undone...
— Ann Patchett, Run
People would say bad things about you, because it is the only way their insignificant self can feel better than you.
— Dennis E. Adonis
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Go on, she urged. Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby Girls
There's an intimacy in listening to somebody's lies, I've always thought--you learn more about someone from the things they wish were true than from the things that actually are.
— Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes
If a problem can't be solved within the frame it was conceived, the solution lies in reframing the problem.
— Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove
Lies I've told my 3 year old recently Trees talk to each other at night.All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.Tiny bears live in drain pipes. If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.Everyone knows at least one secret language.When nobody is looking, I can fly.We are all held together by invisible threads.Books get lonely too.Sadness can be eaten.I will always be there.
— Raúl Gutierrez
It is better to believe an obvious lie, than to swallow a deceitful truth.
— Dennis E. Adonis
That was, in fact, my life. A whole series of reasonable lies.
— Stacey Kade, The Rules
This is the only way that you can hope to survive. Because life... is not a movie. Everyone lies. Good guys lose. And love... does not conquer all.
— George Huang, Swimming with Sharks
I have been thinking about the idea of excuses for some time now. They are like menacing demons that creep into our lives without us knowing. They are roadblocks, white lies to ourselves, a reason to set the bar lower, and self-justification for achieving less than our full potential.
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth.”“You don’t seem to agree.”“I don’t know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble understandinghow truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat's Cradle
Lies are like muscles: it takes practice to make them strong.
— Jeff Ashton, Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony
Nobody's truly free. Everyone is prisoner to a secret, a sin, a lie. It wasn't by accident that, in the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could attain it.
— J. Matthew Nespoli
But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country’s economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant. Pg. 400
— Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai
Truth is an outlaw in every country.
— Marty Rubin
And truth is malleable, something to be bent or stretched or made to disappear, but direct lies always find the path back to the one who tells them.
— Karen Abbott, American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee
I'm never really upset when a person lies because I don't place much value in truths. When you look at the grand design, you realize that there are no truths, only stories. In other words, the only truth is that we are all stories. Lies are just part of the story that we tell.
— Lionel Suggs
Seek for truth,you'll find me;Peek for lies,you'll blind me
— Munia Khan
He manages a sad smile. “An omission is not the same thing as a lie, Miss Bishop. It’s a manipulation.
— Victoria Schwab, The Archived
The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ
Enough white lies can scorch the earth black.
— Isaac Marion, The New Hunger
Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies.
— William Paul Young, The Shack
So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?
— Neal Shusterman, Bruiser
Who are you?" the woman said at last."Lyra Silver—""No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?" Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.
— Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
Lies are convenient when the truth is unfathomable.
— Courtney M. Privett, Shadows of Absolution
Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?'He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.'No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no selfdoubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right, that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next.
— Karen Maitland, Company of Liars
...but I’d learned a long time ago that the worse things are, the more people lie about them.
— Ripley Patton, Ghost Hand
A lie, when believed, became the truth.
— Michelle M. Pillow, The Jaded Hunter
Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth.
— Theresa Breslin, The Medici Seal
The enemy is fierce and he would like for you to think that he has on. Don't believe his lie.
— Brother Andrew, God's Smuggler
Sit on the train tracks and really believe a train won’t come; lie in your house when it is inflamed and tell yourself that it really isn’t burning; go ahead, neglect all sort of reason and continue to tell yourself that what you believe is the irrefutable truth and the day will come when you are wakened by a piercing whistle and scorching flames.
— Dave Guerrero
Apollo. I’m the fucking Lord of the Underworld. Do you honestly think I need to get my jollies by lying to others? I can think of so many better things to do.
— Rosanna Leo, Sunburn
Lies is lying the memory from the truth
— Ahmad Rahmat Ramadhan
I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination
— Jerome K. Jerome
We know that the world is not resting on the horn of a bull
—  we also know that it rests on the horn of lies!
In Jupiter, there are Earth-Size storms; and in Earth, there are Jupiter-Size lies!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The Truth is different than human truths; they are like LIGHT.Truths are like a color, absolute and true, while THE TRUTH is all colors and still colorless; the duality of Truth.
— Caesar J. B. Squitti, The Jesus Christ Code: The Light: The Rainbow of Truths
A Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, once said: ‘Dijiste media verdad. Dirán que mientes dos veces si dices la otra mitad.’”“Translated means…”“You told a half-truth. They’ll say you lie twice when you tell the other half.
— Olga Núñez Miret, Teamwork
Don't be afraid to write. I think a lot of writers of all ages have a fear that they aren't any good at writing. That fear is normal. I feel it. Most writers who care about what they are writing feel it. When you feel like you're not good enough, write anyway. It's just a pesky bug that's whispering lies. The best way to swat the bug is with your pen.
— Tanya  Anderson
Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.
— Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words
YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES."So we can believe the big ones?"YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
...you disappoint me -I am the worst liar in the world - I can't hide my pain or my need so I make a bouquet of my sorrows and give them to you ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Sneaking was a kind of deceit. So was disguise. Just past midnight, wearing dark trousers and Fox's hood, the queen snuck out of her own rooms and stepped into a world of stories and lies.
— Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue
I need some space.""Because of my past?""No, because of mine. When I'm around you I feel like I'm falling. I need to stop before I smash into the ground.""Are you always so honest?""No. Mostly I'm a liar like you.
— Anna McPartlin, Apart From The Crowd
A mask can hide you from others, but not from yourself.
— Marty Rubin
Hypocrites,’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.
— Paul Hoffman, The Last Four Things
It's the rule of the wilds. You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher. A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn't love me.He never loved me.It was all a lie."The old Lena is dead." I say, and then push past him. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone.You must hurt or be hurt.
— Lauren Oliver
No denial of the truth will ever invalidate it.
— Nikki Rosen, In The Eye Of Deception: A True Story
You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies -which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world -what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Two lusts breed in the soul of man: the lust for aggresion, and the lust for telling lies. If one will not allow himself to wrong others, he will wrong himself. If he doesn't come across anyone to lie to, he will lie to himself in his own thoughts.
— Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor
Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint:Things least to be believed are most preferred.All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint,Are readily believed if once put down in print
— John Clare
You lying liar," Vaan said, "who lies to me with lies. Nobody actually likes Shakespeare! They just pretend to sound more cultural and pretentious.
— A.D. Truax, Pretty Shade of Grey
Ask a burning question, get a burning answer
— Lynda Barry, Cruddy
Behind every "Truth" there is always a "Lie", Behind every " Lie" there is always a "Reason", and behind every " Reason" there is always a "Person"....
— Shujoy Chowdhury
Truth is patient. It can afford to be for eventually it will have its way.
— Richard Paul Evans, Lost December
The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimming when once the actions have become a lie.
— George Eliot, Silas Marner
Telling lies is a really terrible thing. These days, lies and silence are the two greatest sins in human society you might say. In reality, we tell lots of lies, and we often break into silence. However, if we were constant;y talking year-round, and telling only the truth truth would probably lose some of its value.
— Haruki Murakami, Hear the Wind Sing
Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also––either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
For it wasn't the secret--the secret that wasn't a secret anyway--that led to austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.
— Sue Miller, While I Was Gone
Everyone lies... It may not be about the same thing, but everyone does it. People do it to fit in, people do it to feel civilized, and there are many more reasons. You can be an honest person, and still be a liar. Everyone lies, including your God. If you don't believe so, then you are simply lying to yourself.
— Lionel Suggs
This story in my head is too hot to touch. I grabbed it anyway.
— Adele Griffin, All You Never Wanted
Tomorrow I'll suggest the liar lies against himselfSo our condition makes escape impossible? -- we breatheand it's moving air that causes stars to twinkle
— Rodney Hall, The Owner of My Face: New & Selected Poems
Lying is the new truth.
— B. Cameron Lee
Tell me Zach.” I don’t know if it was the wind or the adrenaline, but I shivered. “And don’t lie to me.
— Ally Carter, Out of Sight, Out of Time
Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose.
— Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl
Ever since that day, I have lived a lie, the lie of living.
— Lelouch Vi Britannia
Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one's own resources.
— Zadie Smith, NW
Deception is mostly a game we play with ourselves.
— Terry Brooks, The Black Unicorn
But when reality was hopeless, fantasy became more and more necessary.
— Michael  Grant
A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. This means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says, for example, "What do you want to do today?" you say, "I want to do painting with Mrs. Peters," but you don't say, "I want to have my lunch and I want to go to the toilet and I want to go home after school and I want to play with Toby and I want to have my supper
— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
He said that he was sure you would be amendable to this course of action." April paused, eyes widening, before she said indignantly, "I believe he may have lied to me!
— Seanan McGuire, Ashes of Honor
Sam, there comes a time when the world no longer needs heroes. And then the true hero knows to walk away.
— Michael  Grant
But here's something that I know about friendship: Sometimes the right thing to do is to not point out that your friend hasn't touched her chicken fingers or French fries and not point that maybe she's just overreacting. Instead, you just smile and sit with her and say, "I understand" when really, you don't understand her at all.
— Dana Reinhardt, Harmless
Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.
— Anita Shreve, Strange Fits of Passion
Lies were something you told other people to make things easier, somehow - hopefully, for them, but often more selfishly for yourself.
— Michelle Sagara West, Silence
You don’t have to feed the lie if you don’t want it to. If you make it credible it will become that, but only in your mind and only as disproportionate as you’ve decided it is. Truth has a way of being more persistent and if the two ever meet, truth will win.
— Howard L. Salter
She walked away without bothering to look further. She knew he’d be fine. Her specialty was subduing without causing any real damage. He’d lie there for a few minutes. He’d be sore, maybe bruised tomorrow. He’d brush the cobwebs off his imagination to invent a story for his buddies about how three seven-foot, three-hundred-pound male karate black belts attacked him in the park.But she would bet her life on the fact that he would never sneak up on another fragile-looking woman without remembering this night. And that was the point. That was what Gaia lived for.
— Francine Pascal, Fearless
In your novels do you lie deliberately or just out of ignorance?"Laughter. A murmur of approval. The writer hesitated a few seconds. Then counter-attacked:"I'm a liar by vocation," he shouted. "I lie with joy! Literature is the only chance for a true liar to attain any sort of social acceptance."Then more soberly, he added - his voice lowered - that the principal difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that in the former there exists only one truth, the truth as imposed by power, while in free countries every man has the right to defend his own version of events.Truth, he said, is a superstition.
— José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons
I looked at her. Sheila was my girl--the girl I wanted--and wanted for keeps. But it wasn't any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival--the quick easy glib denial. It was a child's weapon--and she'd probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila, I must accept her as she was--be at hand to prop up the weak places. We've all got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila's, but they were there.
— Agatha Christie, The Clocks
Truth can remain silent. Lies must be spoken.
— Mason Cooley
My eyes in tearsHeart never sighsMy mind never fearsI conquer the lies
— Munia Khan
The truth hurts but a lie will eventually as well
— Richard L Torres
There are no secrets.' The thing smiled, showing a row of even, childlike teeth. 'None worth keeping. Only the ones you hide from yourself, which are the most damaging and hurtful of all. Truth is truth, and lie is lie. Tell yourself one's the other and all the world turns kilter.
— David Hewson, Macbeth
But it is best to let sleeping facts lie.
— Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
No secret can remain hidden for ever. Silently and patiently, it waits in the dark. It lets you build your life, carefully stacking the bricks one by one, and then it appears. It deals its blow and everything crumbles. That’s why it remains intact and incorruptible in time, waiting for its ultimate destiny to be revealed.
— Stefanos Livos, A Life In A Moment
The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning!
— Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
Even a lie told for a good purpose has a way of perpetuating itself, doesn't it? Look at all the trouble I caused by refusing to tell the truth about Sarah's father."- Nell
— Jane Steen, The House of Closed Doors
If you cannot lie, tell a different truth.
— thea_zara
Holly clambered after him, struggling up the human-size steps. "Wait! Just wait," she called, overtaking Artemis and looking him in the eye from one step up. "I know you, Artemis. You like to play your genius card close to your chest until the big reveal. And that's worked out for us so far. But this time you need to let me in. I can help. So, tell me the truth, do you have a plan?"Artemis met his friend's gaze and lied to her face. "No," he said. "No plan.
— Eoin Colfer, The Last Guardian
I would rather be told an R-rated truth than a G-rated lie.
— Ken Gire
Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
People lie to adapt...
— Lionel Suggs
The heart never lies
— Christine Love Never Dies
But tales like this must not be taken as truth. You must remind yourself that it is hard to tell where truth ends and a lie begins. So listen all you like, but disbelieve all you hear...You are in the city of lies.
— Arlene J. Chai
When you value someone, it merely shows that you truly have no idea about the person that they aren't showing you.
— Lionel Suggs
To make a statement that one knows is false is more honest than to make a statement that one knows is true.
— Lionel Suggs
You have to look at people now that were members of the Klu Klux Klan or whatever else and now are trying to rewrite their personal histories to tell that they've always been tolerant. It's not peculiar to want to sanitize what you did.
— Ruth Hanna Sachs
[T]he real lie that advertising tells is not so much in what it shows, but in what it leaves out.
— Stefano Benni, Margherita Dolce Vita
Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.
— Erma Bombeck
Popcorn for breakfast! Why not? It's a grain. It's like, like, grits, but with high self-esteem.
— James Patterson, The Angel Experiment
Cakes are healthy too, you just eat a small slice.
— Mary Berry
Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.
— M.F.K. Fisher
I could have killed you.”“Or I could have killed you,” Percy said. Jason shrugged. “If there’d been an ocean in Kansas, maybe.”“I don’t need an ocean—”“Boys,” Annabeth interrupted, “I’m sure you both would’ve been wonderful at killing each other. But right now, you need some rest.”Food first,” Percy said. “Please?
— Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
— Hippocrates
The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.
— Julia Child
You are what what you eat eats.
— Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
I am a better person when I have less on my plate.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Am I tough? Am I strong? Am I hard-core? Absolutely. Did I whimper with pathetic delight when I sank my teeth into my hot fried-chicken sandwich? You betcha.
— James Patterson
What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.
— A.A. Milne
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
— Mark Twain
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
— Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.
— Julia Child
Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.
— Voltaire
your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
— Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
As I got closer to the fence, I held my shirt over my nose to block the smell. One stallion waded through the muck and whinnied angrily at me. He bared his teeth, which were pointed like a bear's.I tried to talk to him in my mind. I can do that with most h
— Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
— Jo Brand
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
While Leo fussed over his helm controls, Hazel and Frank relayed the story of the fish-centaurs and their training camp.'Incredible,' Jason said. 'These are really good brownies.''That's your only comment?' Piper demanded.He looked surprised. 'What? I heard the story. Fish-centaurs. Merpeople. Letter of intro to the Tiber River god. Got it. But these brownies--''I know,' Frank said, his mouth full. 'Try them with Ester's peach preserves.''That,' Hazel said, 'is incredibly disgusting.''Pass me the jar, man,' Jason said.Hazel and Piper exchanged a look of total exasperation. Boys.
— Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena
I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory.
— Mitch Albom
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
— Abraham Lincoln
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans. 
— Ronald Reagan
Whoever thought a tiny candy bar should be called fun size was a moron.
— Glenn Beck
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.
— Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too. And you've got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Jailbird
If you're afraid of butter, use cream.
— Julia Child
Tofu tacos are not Mexican. I think putting tofu on anything and calling it Mexican is an insult to my people.
— Simone Elkeles, Rules of Attraction
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.
— Erma Bombeck
How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?
— Julia Child
Have you tried the cinnamon things?" Poppet asks. "They're rather new. What are they called, Widge?""Fantastically delicious cinnamon things?
— Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
All sorrows are less with bread. 
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.
— George Bernard Shaw
Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian
—  wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian
Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.
— Craig Claiborne
It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.
— Julia Child
I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.
— Mark Twain
I hate France. It's like the whole country's on a diet
— Gordon Korman, One False Note
I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure
— Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.
— Laurie Colwin
A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
— Elsa Schiaparelli
The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.
— Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
— Erma Bombeck
Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes.It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt.
— Judith Olney
If God gives you a Quiznos, can I have a bite? No way. You have to pray for your own food.
— Michael  Grant, Hunger
Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others become eating disorders.
— Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores. 
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
— Jonathan Swift
Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.
— Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
No man is lonely while eating spaghetti:it requires so much attention.
— Christopher Morley
New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
— Mark Twain
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch. 
— James Beard
While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. p.187
— Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.
— Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.
— Benjamin Franklin, Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.
— Fran Lebowitz
But if you're gonna dine with them cannibalsSooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .
— Nick Cave
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. Oh, I'll accomodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.
— Anthony Bourdain
Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.
— Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
— Samuel Butler
Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Thanks cows. I appreciate your tastiness.
— Craig Ferguson
My favorite animal is steak.
— Fran Lebowitz
Simple,' Tummeler replied.' Blueberries is one of the great forces o'good in the world.' How do you figure that?' said Charles. Well,' said Tummeler, 'have you ever seen a troll, or a Wendigo, or,' he shuddered, 'a Shadow-Born ever eating a blueberry pie?' No,' Charles admitted. There y'go,' said Tummeler. It's cause they can't stand the goodness in it.' Can't argue with you there,' said Charles. Foods is good and evil, just like people, or badgers, or even scowlers.' Evil food?' said Charles. Parsnips,' said Tummeler, 'Them's as evil as they come.
— James A. Owen, Here, There Be Dragons
I come from a home where gravy is a beverage.
— Erma Bombeck
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: Frequently there must be a beverage.
— Woody Allen, Without Feathers
He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods.
— P.C. Cast, Hunted
There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee."I suppose you haven't breakfasted?""I have not yet breakfasted.""Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?""No, thank you."She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage league or a league for the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of silence.
— P.G. Wodehouse
What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
— Lin Yutang
I'm pretty sure that eating chocolate keeps wrinkles away because I have never seen a 10 year old with a Hershey bar and crows feet.
— Amy Neftzger
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton
—  he who does not cannot be otherwise.
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
— M.F.K. Fisher