Peter L. Berger Quotes

Your problem is that you have been too honest for too long. Once you start doing it, lying is simpler than breathing.

The devil always has the better tunes!

The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

Treason must be stopped by fair means of foul.

When the devil wants to cause offense against the true doctrine and faith, he does not do so through insignificant people, who do not rate highly with the world, but through those who are the very best, the wisest, the holiest, and the most learned.

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell. Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it. And it's delicious.

O sin, how you paint your face! how you flatter us poor mortals on to death! You never appear to the sinner in your true character; you make fair promises, but you never fulfil one; your tongue is smoother than oil, but the poison of asps is under your lip!

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

Frodo drew himself up, and again Sam was startled by his words and his stern voice. 'On the Precious? How dare you?' he said. 'Think! Would you commit your promise to that, Smeagol? It will hold you. But it is more treacherous than you are. It may twist your words. Beware!

And I flirted with the devil and he dealt me a card. He told me that you will never win. So I sold my soul to the devil. I never thought it could be this bad. And I got the devil takin' me away

I mean, the more a man was in the Devil's power, the less he would be aware of it, on the principle that a man is still fairly sober as long as he knows he's drunk.

Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.

Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting moment.

Whose hearts must I break? What lies must I maintain? - Through whose blood am I to wade ?

The Devil may also make use of morality.

I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

Satan, that great angler, hath his sundry baits for sundry tempers of men, which they all catch greedily at, but few perceive the hook till it be too late.

this lifeless paper, cruel imposter, was the only to take her with him

I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.

Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

I’ve done made a deal with the devil.

False as the adulterate promises of favorites in power when poor men court them.

Sin always seems 'good, and pleasant, and desirable,' at the time of commission.

I don't belong. Not here. Not now. I have to get back there. The bet was rigged, he made me believe. Now there's darkness in my soul. I want to die . . . again. But I choose to come back, why?

When a woman teams up with a snake a moral storm threatens somewhere.