A Quote by V. S. Naipaul

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

V. S. Naipaul

Quote Topics

Lies Only Ourselves Punished Tell Those Truly Which

Quote Author

V. S. Naipaul
Trinidadian - Writer
Born: August 17, 1932

Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.

Jeanette Winterson

The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.

Derek Landy

I'm a big believer in the notion that our greatest potential lies in our darkest parts. To a certain extent it's only in facing those parts of ourselves that we can truly grow, and I think that's true of all of the characters I've played, certainly in the past few years.

Zachary Quinto

The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.

James Wolcott

Only in winter can you tell which trees are truly green. Only when the winds of adversity blow can you tell whether an individual or a country has steadfastness.

John F. Kennedy

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

Paul Auster

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

Erich Fromm

I think first we have to begin by telling the truth, which I think has actually been a big stumbling block. We can look at Donald Trump and see how he lies, but I think we also have to look at some of the lies we've told ourselves and the lies we've accepted and internalized ourselves.

Michelle Alexander

The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies.

Lewis B. Smedes

I'm interested in such things as the difference between how we perceive the world and what the world turns out to be. The difference is between the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves. There is a wonderful Russian saying, which I use as the epigraph of one of my novels, which goes, He lies like an eyewitness. Which is very sly, clever and true.

Julian Barnes

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.

Richard Bach

Deliver us from evil - from moral duplicity and weakness, from laziness and spiritual complacency, from those lies we tell ourselves from our fear of facing the truth.

Rich Mullins

Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.

Jim Morrison

What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.