Quotes About Perfidy

“Life is not an easy matter ... . You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”

— Leon Trotsky

“Wholly given up to villainy and debauchery, and ride the steed of perfidy and presumption, and dive into the sea of error and impiety, and are united under the banner of Satan.”

— Bernard Lewis

“Is it not He whose immortal hand ... has written there the death sentence of tyrants? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power.
[The Cult of the Supreme Being]”

— Maximilien De Robespierre

“Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!”

— Andrew Levkoff

“The best laid plot can injure its maker, and often a man's perfidy will rebound on himself.”

— Jean De La Fontaine

“English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.”

— Paul Scott

“It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls her pride to her aid, desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes and resolves to meet the false one that night at the ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanor, how little his desertion has affected her.”

— Charlotte Brontë

“She never expected gross perfidy from the meek and mild." Mathilde saw her own face reflected in the window, but no, it was a barn owl on a low branch in the cherry trees. She could barely master herself. She had never expected this. These women. Such kindness. Their eyes shining in the dim room. They saw her. She didn't know why, but they saw her and they loved her even still. "There's”

— Lauren Groff

“As the war went on, opposition grew. The American Peace Society printed a newspaper, the Advocate of Peace, which published poems, speeches, petitions, sermons against the war, and eyewitness accounts of the degradation of army life and the horrors of battle. The abolitionists, speaking through William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, denounced the war as one "of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine-marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every other feature of national depravity ... " Considering the strenuous efforts of the nation's leaders to build patriotic support, the amount of open dissent and criticism was remarkable. Antiwar meetings took place in spite of attacks by patriotic mobs.”

— Howard Zinn

“I know that when people pull apart, they usually employ misunderstanding as a weapon, deliberately getting hold of the stick's wrong end, impaling themselves on its point in order to prove the perfidy of the other.”

— Salman Rushdie

“The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.”

— Victor Davis Hanson

“Despereaux looked at his father, at his grey-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws clasped together in front of his heart, and he felt suddenly as if his own heart would break in two. His father looked so small, so sad.
"Forgive me," said Lester again.
Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.
Isn't it ridiculous, after all, to think that a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn't it ridiculous to think that a mouse ever could forgive anyone for such perfidy?
But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."
And he said those words because he sensed it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.”

— Kate DiCamillo

“At least Lester had the decency to weep at his act of perfidy. Reader, do you know what 'perfidy' means? I have a feeling you do, based on the scene that unfolded here. But you should look up the word in your dictionary, just to be sure.”

— Kate DiCamillo

“While I was now fairly demoralized, as well as aflame with the prospect of an hour in his daughter's arms, the thought of using his car to debauch his bourgeois paradise was a perfidy at which I drew the line.”

— Peter De Vries

“John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on.”

— Richard Corliss

“O, the perfidy of men." "What have I done?" he protested. "Nothing at present, but you are the only representative of your sex I have at hand to abuse. Take your lumps for your brothers.”

— Deanna Raybourn

“To a generous mind few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted ...”

— Ann Radcliffe

“The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one's own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears ... .”

— Arthur Koestler

“Perfidy and brutal force thwarted opportunities for calling President Wilson's Arbitral Award to life. Nevertheless, its significance is not to be underestimated: through that decision the aspiration of the Armenian people for the lost Motherland had obtained vital and legal force.”

— Serzh Sargsyan

“The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world's scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying.”

— Horace Mann

“Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.”

— Samuel Johnson

“[It] is indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community agst [against] the incapicity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.”

— James Madison

“I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.”

— Andrew Jackson

“There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others.”

— Edmund Burke

“The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.”

— Barbara Tuchman

“My history of the Jesuits is not elegantly written, but is supported by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible. Their restoration is indeed "a step toward darkness," cruelty, perfidy, despotism, death and I wish we were out of danger of bigotry and Jesuitism.”

— John Adams

“We have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition; that our life expresses Christ, the bond of our adoption. Accordingly, unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy, but we also abjure our Savior Himself.”

— John Calvin

“Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.”

— Thomas Paine

“Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can blast the flower, Even when in most unwary hour It blooms in Fancy's bower. Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can rend the shrine In which its vermeil splendours shine.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“No legal ceremony
no election of the woman
no penalty for the perfidy of the man
no law to compel him to do his duty, no compensation for the poor woman who is turned adrift like the girl of the street, penniless, to sell herself on the best possible terms. This is Divine marriage, or Moses and the Bible lie; and this is Bible divorce
putting away!”

— Victoria Woodhull

“Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,
that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.”

— Lord Chesterfield

“Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man who hath either religion, honour, or prudence. Thosewho violate it, may be cunning, but they are not able. Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards.”

— Lord Chesterfield

“The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey.”

— William Ellery Channing