Quotes about secrets

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

— Lord Acton

Our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, grieves, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations --all these belong to our secret, and are almost all incommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.

— W. H. Auden

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Secrets travel fast in Paris.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.

— Andre Breton

Secrecy is the badge of fraud.

— Sir John Chadwick

Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves.

— Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

I know that's a secret, for it's whispered everywhere.

— William Congreve

A man's most open actions have a secret side to them.

— Joseph Conrad

Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.

— Don Delillo

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

— Charles Dickens

His mind of man, a secret makes I meet him with a start he carries a circumference in which I have no part.

— Emily Dickinson

Three can keep a secret if two are dead.

— Benjamin Franklin

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

— Sigmund Freud

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

— Robert Frost

Your secret is your prisoner; once you reveal it, you become its slave.

— Ibn Gabirol

Where secrecy reigns, carelessness and ignorance delight to hide while skill loves the light.

— Daniel C. Gelman

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Women's propensity to share confidences is universal. We confirm our reality by sharing.

— Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.

— Thomas Hobbes

Never tell a secret to a bride or a groom; wait until they have been married longer.

— Edgar Watson Howe

Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.

— Elbert Hubbard

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.

— Victor Hugo

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

— Samuel Johnson

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

— Samuel Johnson

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

— Samuel Johnson

A man can keep a secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.

— Jean De La Bruyere

Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.

— Jean De La Fontaine

How can we accept another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

When a friend, then, indulges in the joy of unburdening a secret on to another friend's bosom, he makes the latter, in his turn, feel the urge to taste the same joy himself. He implores him, it is true, not to tell a soul; but if such a condition were taken absolutely literally, it would at once cut off the flow of these joys at their very source. The general practice is for the secret to be confided only to an equally trustworthy friend, the same conditions being imposed on him. And so from trustworthy friend to trustworthy friend the secret goes moving on round that immense chain, until finally it reaches the ears of just the very person or persons whom the first talker had expressly intended it never should reach.

— Alessandro Manzoni

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon.

— John Milton

What is told into the ear of a man is often heard a hundred miles away.

— Chinese Proverb

Tell your friend a lie. If he keeps it secret, then tell him the truth.

— Portuguese Proverb

A secret between two is God's secret, between three is all mens.

— Spanish Proverb

Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the State.

— Cardinal De Richelieu

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

— George Bernard Shaw

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

— Alexander Smith

I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life.

— Sydney Rev Smith

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

— Sun Tzu

Secrecy is the chastity of friendship.

— Jeremy Taylor

Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets; for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.

— Sir Henry Taylor

Everyone is like a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

— Mark Twain

I usually get my stuff from people who promised somebody else that they would keep it a secret.

— Walter Winchell

He confided his deepest secret to you; be always wary of his secret.

— Dejan Stojanovic

There are many secrets; don’t try to resolve them all.

— Dejan Stojanovic

Will the day tell its secret before it disappears, becomes timeless night.

— Dejan Stojanovic

3 can keep a secret, if two are dead.

— Benjamin Franklin

Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes