There are three kinds of liars: those who lie with their thoughts, those who lie with words and those who lie with their very lives. The liar of thought, for example, is the individual who is suspicious. If he sees two people talking, he immediately imagines they are talking about him. If they break off their conversation, he is convinced they are doing so because they have seen him coming. Whatever other people may say he interprets as an attack on himself. Such a person does not look for the truth but feeds on conjecture. Hence indiscreet curiousity, scandalmongering, the habit of evesdropping, of picking quarrels, of making rash judgments.
The liar of the tongue, for example, is the lazy person who gets up late in the morning and instead of saying, “I’m sorry, I’ve been a fool,” spins a yarn about having been ill and unable to stand up properly. Or else it is the person who wants something but instead of saying “I want one of those,” cajoles others with the words, “I am feeling ill, I need this, or that…”
Lastly, there are the liars with their lives: a profligate who pretends to be chaste, a miser who praises love for the poor, (and others of a similar sort). They are two-faced people, their outward appearance quite different from the inward reality. Their whole existence is duplicity, a kind of acting.
