"The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."
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Betrayal quotes
Betrayal
519 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Betrayal quotes (page 2 of 26)
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"Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius."
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"Nature never did betray the heart that loved her."
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"To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal."
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"Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal."
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"It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them."
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"All a man can betray is his conscience."
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"I think the play offers (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things- love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives."
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"Each betrayal begins with trust."
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"Towards the end of your life you have something like a pain schedule to fill out - a long schedule like a federal document, only it's your pain schedule. Endless categories. First, physical causes - like arthritis, gallstones, menstrual cramps. New category, injured vanity, betrayal, swindle, injustice. But the hardest items of all have to do with love. The question then is: So why does everybody persist? If love cuts them up so much."
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"I'm trying to take culture and put it onstage, demonstrate it is capable of sustaining you. There is no idea that can't be contained by life: Asian life, European life, certainly black life. My plays are about love, honor, duty, betrayal - things humans have written about since the beginning of time."
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"We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot."
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"Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third."
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"Betrayal is the only truth that sticks."
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"All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself"
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"To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)"
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"Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword"
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"I think that the greatest betrayal that a revolutionary can participate in is to become like the people you are struggling against. To become like your persecutors. I think that is a betrayal and a sin."
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"The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre."
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"Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all."
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