Worse than telling a lie is spending your whole life living true to that lie.

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.

…we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

one of the most fascinating and effective kinds of lying is self-deception.

the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth

Men lie, and they lie to theirselves worst of all.

The lie, the perfect lie, about people we know, about the relations we have with them, about our motive for some action, formulated in totally different terms, the lie as to what we are, whom we love, what we feel with regard to people who love us … that lie is one of the few things in the world that can open windows for us on to what is new and unknown, that can awaken in us sleeping senses for the contemplation of universes that otherwise we should never have known.

[...] no one had lived up to the roles they acted out in public. They wasted their years trying to live the lies that they had created for themselves. Only in private could they really be the demons, hypocrites and sinners they really were, and woe betide anyone who caught them at their game, because the only thing worse than a lie is a lie exposed.

For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves.

Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths