Jacques Barzun Quotes

Show me a liar, and I'll show you a thief.

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?

A lie is the abandonment and, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity by man.

Power and position often make a man trifle with the truth.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.

Hypocrisy is a fearful evil, and every thing which has a tendency to produce it should be avoided.

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

Cheats easily believe others as bad as themselves; there is no deceiving them, nor do they long deceive.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.

Even a little untruth destroys a man, as a drop of poison ruins milk.

Past all shame, so past all truth.

To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.

When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed

Of all things in the world that stink in the nostrils of men, hypocrisy is the worst.

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

It is a shame when nonsense can substitute for fact with impunity.

Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.

No matter how thin you slice it it's still baloney.