C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Self-deceit
Who has deceived thee so often as thyself?
Every man is his own greatest dupe.
We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a calm conscience without possessing virtue.
The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal.
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artifices as we do ourselves.
To be deceived by our enemies or betrayed by our friends is insupportable; yet by ourselves are we often content to be so treated.
What man, in his right mind, would conspire his own hurt? Men are beside themselves, when they transgress against their convictions.
The greatest of fools is he who imposes on himself, and in his greatest concern thinks certainly he knows that which he has least studied, and of which he is most profoundly ignorant.
Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.
From the beginning of the world to this day there was never any great villainy acted by men, but it was in the strength of some great fallacy put upon their minds by a false representation of evil for good or good for evil.
Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.