A Quote by Leonardo da Vinci

To lie is vile, to tell truth is excellent, if not noble.

Leonardo da Vinci

Quote Topics

Excellent Lie Noble Tell Truth Truth Is Vile

Quote Author

Leonardo da Vinci
Italian - Artist
April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519

The lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things, it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

Leonardo da Vinci

Sometimes it’s more noble to tell a small lie than to deliver a painful truth.

Robin Williams

It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

Robert A. Heinlein

I can't lie - I have one of those faces where you can tell. It's expressive and lends itself to being cheeky. I always tell the truth even when I should probably tell a white lie.

Jessica Barden

People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.

George Mikes

Picasso said art is a lie that tells the truth. What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

Nicolas Cage

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

Nicolas Cage

Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

Leonardo da Vinci

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speakes he lies.

Franz Kafka

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

Richard Pryor

I get paid to lie to people as an actor. Country music is the one area that I don't lie. I tell the truth.

Christian Kane

I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

Henrik Ibsen

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.

Umberto Eco

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.