The best lie is the worst.
Meaning: A lie that succeeds too perfectly eventually collapses under its own elaborate contradictions.
Origin: Recorded in A Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, an undated collection published in London by Whittaker & Co. around 1880 and credited to Thomas Preston. Its earlier history hasn't been traced.
More proverbs about Communication
- Give a dog a bone in his mouth, and you may kick him and he can't bite. — A person preoccupied with satisfying their immediate desires loses the ability to resist…
- Every man as his business lies. — Expertise and judgment develop naturally from close involvement with one's own work and r…
- It's a bad cause that none dare speak in. — Silence around a cause signals its moral weakness or indefensibility, not its strength.
- Children and fools speak the truth. — Unguarded honesty emerges from those lacking social filters or awareness of consequences.
- Children should hear, see, and say nothing. — Children benefit from observing and learning quietly before contributing their own opinio…
- They talk of Christmas so long that it comes. — Repeated anticipation and discussion of an event eventually brings its arrival into reali…
From our untranslatable words
- Tutear — To switch to the informal tú with someone — a small, deliberate act of closing social dis…
- Puente — The day taken off to 'bridge' a midweek public holiday to the weekend, turning it into a…
- Vergüenza ajena — The squirming embarrassment felt on behalf of another person, who may be entirely untroub…