quotations about betrayal
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Camino Real
The girl who will share your life. She will love you, she will betray you, and finally she will die for you. And it will all have been for nothing. All for nothing in the end.
JOSEPH DELANEY
Attack of the Fiend
Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
JEAN GENET
Prisoner of Love
No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.
JOSEPH CONRAD
Some Reminiscences
Betray a friend, and you'll often find you have ruined yourself.
AESOP
Fables
When one does another person an injustice, in some mysterious way it does one good to discover (or to persuade oneself) that the injured party has also behaved badly or unfairly in some little matter or other; it is always a relief to the conscience if one can apportion some measure of guilt to the person one has betrayed.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
No one ever really pays for betrayal in silver.... The price of any betrayal always comes due in flesh.
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger
Betrayal can only happen if you love.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
A Perfect Spy
Better ask questions before you shoot,
Deceit and betrayal's bitter fruit.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Lonesome Day", The Rising
Betrayal and dishonor is usually an inside job.
T.F. HODGE
From Within I Rise
Each betrayal begins with trust.
PHISH
Farmhouse
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Looking Glass War
As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.
ADA LEVERSON
Love's Shadow
Thou hast prevaricated with thy friend,
By underhand contrivances undone me;
And while my open nature trusted in thee,
Thou hast stept in between me and my hopes,
And ravish'd from me all my soul held dear.
Thou hast betray'd me.
NICHOLAS ROWE
Lady Jane Grey
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The Poisonwood Bible
Be certain that he who has betrayed thee once will betray thee again.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace.
ANTHONY MINGHELLA
The English Patient
God, why is betrayal the only truth that sticks?
ARTHUR MILLER
After the Fall