"Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception"
About this Quote
Deception is sold as freedom - an escape hatch from consequences - but Lucas flips it into drudgery, the kind that eats your time and attention like unpaid overtime. "Nothing is so boring" is doing sly work here: he’s not moralizing about lying as evil so much as demoting it to a tedious administrative task. The glamour drains out. What’s left is maintenance.
The phrase "keep up" carries the real sting. A lie isn’t a single act; it’s a subscription. Once you buy in, you’re stuck updating the story, monitoring who knows what, rehearsing expressions, remembering invented details, and running constant risk assessments in ordinary conversation. The subtext is psychological: deception turns your mind outward, into surveillance mode. It crowds out curiosity, spontaneity, even pleasure - not because you’ll be punished, but because you’ll be busy.
Lucas, writing in late Victorian and early 20th-century Britain, comes out of a culture built on manners, reputations, and social performance. In that world, the "small" deceptions - the polished self, the strategic omission, the polite falsehood - are practically infrastructural. His line reads as a quiet indictment of the energy required to maintain appearances in a society that rewards them. It’s also an argument for honesty on pragmatic grounds: truth is efficient. You don’t have to remember it.
The irony is that boredom becomes the deterrent. Not shame, not virtue - just the exhausting banality of living as your own press secretary.
The phrase "keep up" carries the real sting. A lie isn’t a single act; it’s a subscription. Once you buy in, you’re stuck updating the story, monitoring who knows what, rehearsing expressions, remembering invented details, and running constant risk assessments in ordinary conversation. The subtext is psychological: deception turns your mind outward, into surveillance mode. It crowds out curiosity, spontaneity, even pleasure - not because you’ll be punished, but because you’ll be busy.
Lucas, writing in late Victorian and early 20th-century Britain, comes out of a culture built on manners, reputations, and social performance. In that world, the "small" deceptions - the polished self, the strategic omission, the polite falsehood - are practically infrastructural. His line reads as a quiet indictment of the energy required to maintain appearances in a society that rewards them. It’s also an argument for honesty on pragmatic grounds: truth is efficient. You don’t have to remember it.
The irony is that boredom becomes the deterrent. Not shame, not virtue - just the exhausting banality of living as your own press secretary.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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