Rita Mae Brown Quotes

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

Some people will lie to you because they mean to. Others will do it to tell you what you want to hear.

Flattery makes friends and truth makes enemies

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.

You can know something is a lie when it has no love in it.

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

You never monkey with the truth.

The truth just happens - lies take time to make.

It's real easy to manufacture what you think the people want to hear. But that's not very honest.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Just because you're upfront with someone doesn't mean you're an honest person; you might just be someone in the passenger seat.

You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.

There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.

When affection only speaks, truth is not always there.

No one ever tells us the truth, even those we love.

It is foreign to the Cherokee principle to feign friendship where it does not exist.

People do not necessarily reveal what is going on - only bad actors do.

There is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of dissimulation and falsehood that I am surprised they can be used by anyone in so noble, so generous a passion as virtuous love.

I don't think it is good if everyone says 'yes' when they mean 'no.'

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

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

But here's the thing about being honest: All the liars HATE you for it, and most of the people in the world are liars. They lie to their bosses, they lie to their families, they lie to themselves, they lie so much they don't even know they're lying anymore. If you have the courage to be honest even a little bit all those people will hate you for it, because their lie is reflected in your honesty. Oscar Wilde wasn't kidding when he said, "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

A lover's a liar, To himself he lies, The truthful are loveless, Like oysters their eyes!

A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.