“For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…”
Source: After the Funeral (1953)
Context: There were to be no short cuts to the truth. Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away...
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Agatha Christie 320
English mystery and detective writer 1890–1976Related quotes
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Pablo Picasso said something very similar. Perhaps it is the source? From Herschel B. Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art: "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."
Disputed
St. 2.
The Cataract of Lodore http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/652.html (1820)
All Said and Done (1972), p. 16 ISBN 1569249814
General sources
“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.”
Variant: People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“No matter how fast a lie runs, the truth will someday overtake it.”
On lies and truth - "TB Joshua Rejects Courts Findings, Insists Building Collapse Was A Sabotage" http://citifmonline.com/2015/07/10/tb-joshua-rejects-courts-findings-insists-building-collapse-a-sabotage/ Citi FM, Ghana (July 10 2015)
"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility.
This is the great fall, the fall by which the fish forgets the sea, the ox forgets the meadow, the clerk forgets the city, every man forgets his environment and, in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself. This is the real fall of Adam, and it is a spiritual fall. It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.