deception

The sight of the eye, the hearing of the ear, the touch of the hand may each and all be deceived, but the instructions of the spirit are in all things correct. The combined senses may misguide or fail, but he who happily secures the companionship of the Holy Spirit, walks in the ways of life and neither fears, becomes weary nor faints by the wayside.

Politicians are masters of the art of deception.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

Self-love is even deceived by self-love, because by looking out for our own interests and disregarding those of other people, we lose the advantage that comes with the exchange of favors.

Self-love makes us deceive ourselves in almost all matters, to censure others, and to blame them for the same faults that we do not correct in ourselves; we do this either because we are unaware of the evil that exists within us, or because we always see our own evil disguised as a good.

Honest and sincere acts mislead the wicked and cause them to lose their path to their own goals, because mean-spirited people usually believe that people never act without deceit.

If we took as much trouble to be what we should be as we take to deceive others by disguising what we are, we could appear as we really are without having the trouble of disguising ourselves.

Although most friendships that exist do not merit the name, we can nevertheless make use of them in accordance with our needs, as a kind of commercial venture based on uncertain foundations and in which we are very often deceived.

It is sometimes useful to pretend we are deceived, because when we show a deceiving man that we see through his artifices, we only encourage him to increase his deceptions.

He who uses trickery should at least make use of his judgment to learn that he can scarcely hide treacherous conduct for very long among clever men who are determined to find him out, although they may pretend to be deceived in order to disguise their knowledge of his deceitfulness.