Duplicity Quotes

• Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Truth, Honesty, Integrity

  "Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think".

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• Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Beautiful, Truth, Honesty

  Charles R. Swindoll (2004). “Improving Your Serve”, p.23, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

  Blaise Pascal

  Lying, Dishonesty, Conflict

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works”, p.127, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.

  Honore de Balzac

  Fake People, Flow

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “Letters of Two Brides”, p.48, The Floating Press

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• There’s a special place in hell for men who convince women their intuition is insecurity to protect their duplicity.

  dream hampton

  Men, Insecurity, Intuition

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• I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
  The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
  I lay unto the grievous charge of others.

  William Shakespeare

  Secret, Politics, Firsts

  William Shakespeare, Janis Lull (2009). “King Richard III”, p.95, Cambridge University Press

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• The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.

  Stephen Covey

  Life, Relationship, Change

  Stephen R. Covey (1994). “Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE Every Day”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• The great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.

  Boris Pasternak

  Life, Opposites, Space

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• Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy, and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kiss of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh.

  Addison Webster Moore

  Kissing, Enemy, Flesh

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• Every evil screams only one message: 'I am good.'

  Alexander Schmemann

  Christian, Evil, Deception

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• Even the world, that despises simplicity, does not profess to approve of duplicity.

  Bill Vaughan

  Simplicity, World, Doe

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• The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.

  Stephen Covey

  Relationship, Important, Ingredients

  Stephen R. Covey (2016). “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change Interactive Edition”, p.228, Mango Media Inc.

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• Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.

  Khalil Gibran

  Spiritual, Eye, Dark

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• Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Brother, Integrity, Simple

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• A duplicitous country with a duplicitous leadership is going to give us more duplicity. And that duplicity is going lead us off an abyss. That's going to happen.

  Matt Shea

  Inspiring, Country, Giving

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• ..we wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes- this debt we pay to human guile; with torn and bleeding hearts we smile.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Smile, Lying, Eye

  1895 'We Wear the Mask', stanza 1.

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• A man can go from being a lover to being a stranger in three moves flat but a woman under the guise of friendship will engage in acts of duplicity which come to light very much later. There are different species of self-justification.

  Anita Brookner

  Love, Friendship, Women

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• 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

  Spiritual, Lying, Lies We Tell Ourselves

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• One dupe is as impossible as one twin.

  John Sterling

  Dupes, Impossible, Twins

  John Sterling (1848). “Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues”, p.121

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• Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

  Norm MacDonald

  Men, Desire, May

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• A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always looks askant. But one may err once, nay, a hundred times, without being double-minded. There can never be mental duplicity where there is sincerity.

  Joseph Joubert

  Eye, Double Minded, Deceit

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• Duplicity is necessary in daily life, in that it covers many unpleasant things from sight, so they may not disturb the pleasure of others.

  Edouard Rene de Laboulaye

  Sight, May, Daily Life

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• Avoid duplicity, that is, do not let your heart be divided between attachment to God and attachment to earthly things, 'You cannot serve God and mammon' (Mt. 6:24); cling to God alone, put your trust in Him alone; for the Devil, by inciting us to duplicity, seeks himself to gain possession of our heart, which is single and indivisible.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Heart, Attachment

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• Q.Do you have any positive message, in your opinion? A.Indeed I do think that I do. Q.Such as what? A.The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have involuntarily chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole.

  Tennessee Williams

  Thinking, Men, Race

  Tennessee Williams, John S. Bak (2009). “New Selected Essays: Where I Live”, p.84, New Directions Publishing

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• Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, 'This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments.' I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Men, People, Giving

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