Thomas Otway Quotes

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.

Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

Put away from you a dissembling mouth.

Flattery makes friends and truth makes enemies

In Indian politics, deception seems a byword. I'll have none of that.

Malicious lying is usually a matter of need, but often the cruelest things we say are the truth.

I just don't have a tolerance for people being fake, I don't think. Maybe especially when I think they have bad intentions.

I cannot stand dishonesty among people, the tendency to prevaricate.

The same man cannot be both Friend and Flatterer.

I don't lie," I lied.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.

Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.

Flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity.

No adulation; 'tis the death of virtue; Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest Save he who courts the flattery.

The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

All things to all men only fools will tell, Truth profits none but those that use it well.