“And upon those three lies was Elric’s destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.”

— Michael Moorcock

Book 3, Chapter 5 “The Pale King’s Mercy” (p. 118)
The Elric Cycle, Elric of Melniboné (1972)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "And upon those three lies was Elric’s destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly…" by Michael Moorcock?

Michael Moorcock photo

Michael Moorcock 224

English writer, editor, critic 1939

Related quotes

“Some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. ... How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiographical dictation, 2 December 1906. Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)

“By adding three lies, one does not get the truth — only a bigger lie.”

Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006) Yugoslavian and Serbian politician

Slobodan Milošević (2002) International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic https://web.archive.org/web/20030204145956/http://www.icdsm.org/milosevic/30jan.htm

“As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.”

Andre Norton (1912–2005) American writer of science fiction and fantasy

“If we are serious about our discipleship, Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are most difficult for us to do.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Source: The Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book

“We do only three things in life: we sit, we stand, we lie horizontal. The rest is just a story.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

“The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Joyzelle, Act i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“"You've done well to say all that! Yes, it is always easy to lie for a moment. You might have lied, but it would have been worse when we woke up from the lies. It's a reward to talk. Perhaps it's the only reward there is."
She said that profoundly, right to the bottom of my heart.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

“4: Stories let us lie to ourselves. And those lies satisfy our desires.”

Seth Godin book All Marketers Are Liars

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to an atheist (24 March 1954), p. 43
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Related topics