Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

Like many people, I have a fascination with lies and the people who tell them. I wouldn't say I've never told a lie, but I don't think I've ever told one without both assuming I would be found out and feeling absolutely rotten about it.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

When you're living a lie, the scariest thing is to be alone with your thoughts.

It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

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 trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it... though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces. (a servant in the House of Black and White)

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

Guilt soon learns to lie.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

I've sort of prided myself on playing characters with conscience. The first way I go about creating a character is looking at that area of conscience. What have they done, and what has it cost.

The world loves to be deceived.

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart.

On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

I'm the one who has to look in the mirror, and after a while it begins to eat at you.

I was living a complete lie. But unfortunately, guilt doesn't make you stop.

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.

I was involved, deeply involved, in a deception... I have deceived my friends - and I had millions of them.

Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.