Charles Dickens Quotes

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

It is of great consequences to disguise your inclination, and to play the hypocrite well.

My opinion is that he's a swindler and you're a sucker.

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

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

As readers, we sense when the game is being played for real and when something else is afoot: pride, showmanship, the pursuit of power, self-aggrandizement, revenge, making money. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that, but I dislike closing a book with the sense that I've been had.

I liked Dallas better because it was more deceptive, you could do more with it.

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.

It's when someone has an agenda of their own for the record that it doesn't work for me.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

A market is a place set apart for men to deceive and get the better of one another.

Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

Everybody has an agenda.

Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues and plays all sorts of characters, even that of disinterestedness

Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies

Promise everything to anyone, unless clear obligation prevents it. Only live up to those promises which are of advantage to you.

I'm interested in people that can say one thing and have completely different motives behind that.

I had a job once selling encyclopedias, and that was an interesting job because I learned a lot about people's vulnerabilities and how salesmen take advantage of them.

Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it. A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

The world is full of Kings and Queens, Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.