William Shakespeare Quotes

Who makes the fairest show means most deceit.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

So may the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Appearances often are deceiving.

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both.

There is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back.

In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon turned out to be a spineless, grinning idiot.

We are deceived by the appearance of right.

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.

All that glitters is not hovery.

Man is ice to truth and fire to falsehood.

He who attempts to make others believe in means which he himself despises is a puffer; he who makes use of more means than he knows to be necessary is a quack; and he who ascribes to those means a greater efficacy than his own experience warrants is an impostor.

When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-- as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface.

Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.

What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.

One of my weaknesses happens to be lying, and I could tell you that I'm never going to lie again in my life, but that would be a lie.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.

I've come to learn that the determined and gifted and genuine sociopath has far more power to deceive than we realize.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

Arafat contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.