A Quote by Alexander Pope

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.

Alexander Pope

Quote Topics

Excuse Guarded Lie More Terrible Than Worse

Quote Author

Alexander Pope
English - Poet
May 21, 1688 - May 30, 1744

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.

Pope John Paul II

An excuse is a lie guarded.

Jonathan Swift

A lie is an excuse guarded

Jonathan Swift

There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie. Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice prepense.

Hosea Ballou

We lie more to strangers than we lie to co-workers. Extroverts lie more than introverts. Men lie eight times more about themselves than they do other people. Women lie more to protect other people.

Pamela Meyer

Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

An excuse is a skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.

Billy Sunday

The thought, 'I can't' is a lie. We use it to excuse ourselves from trying.

Darren Hardy

Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie.

Robert Breault

But maybe half a lie is worse than a real lie.

Lillian Hellman

So many people say, "I just don't have a good job, or my marriage is not where it's supposed to be." Really it's excuse after excuse to not be happy. To me it's a waste. I'm going to look at what's right and not what's wrong in my life. I'm alive, I'm healthy, and you know, a good thing to remember is somebody's got it a lot worse than we do.

Joel Osteen

A definite factor in getting a lie believed is the size of the lie. The broad mass of the people, in the simplicity of their hearts, more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

Adolf Hitler

No doubt, corporate CEOs who lie to their shareholders and politicians who lie to their public know and believe intellectually that lying is immoral. Why then do they lie? They lie to others because they first lie to themselves.

Lewis B. Smedes

I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you’re a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you’re a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie.