A Quote by Washington Allston

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.

Washington Allston

Quote Topics

Conscientious Device Half Half Truth Intangible Kind Lie Most Peculiar Therefore Truth Worst

Quote Author

Washington Allston
American - Artist
November 5, 1779 - July 9, 1843

A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable

Finley Peter Dunne

A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.

Finley Peter Dunne

A lie is profanity. A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth.

Richard Pryor

I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.

Steve Martin

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. When in doubt, tell the truth. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

Mark Twain

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.

John Steinbeck

I'm the worst liar - I can't lie for my life. And I don't lie at all, because I'm the worst liar - but as a kid, I thought I was a great liar, so I would lie all the time, but everybody knew I was lying.

Julia Garner

I sometimes lie, especially about personal things, because what does it matter? I am a kind of minute commodity. My name is no longer my own. I try to lie as much as I can when I’m interviewed. It’s reverse psychology. I figure if you lie, they’ll print the truth.

River Phoenix

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

I always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.

William Saroyan

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.

Orson Scott Card

No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.

Mark Lawrence

[Propaganda] does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way.