"I am fifty-two years old," she thought, "and I know the measure of a man's deceitfulness, so I can take care of myself, but Thora is a childlike lassie.
"An Orkney Maid"
Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
For the practical necessities of life the imagination stands to man in good stead, but as the inadequate instrument of speculative thought its fertile deceitfulness is betrayed in his very earliest attempts at philosophy; nor are his subsequent efforts directed to anything else than the endeavour to correct and allow for its refractions and distortions, to transcend its narrow limitations, to force it to express, meanly and clumsily, truths which otherwise it would entirely obscure and deny.
"The Faith of the Millions (2nd series)"
George Tyrrell
It is one thing to instinctively avoid a theft or a falsehood, even if the first origin of such instinct were the fear of consequences or the love of approbation; it is quite another-the inward condemnation of something which "the deceitfulness of sin" is able to excuse, and which the world at large would regard as permissible or at least venial.
"Creation and Its Records"
B.H. Baden-Powell