Mark Twain's On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying

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The Art of Lying In our society, many people assume that lying is something wrong to do; they use to say that you always have to tell the truth no matter the situation. I believe those people are certainly wrong because it is impossible for any human being to always tell the truth, Mark Twain said “Lying is universal—we all do it.” This world would be so bizarre if everyone would speak only the truth. It is just something that would never happen, but people are fooling themselves thinking that lying is wrong, that we must tell the truth always. People like the lady that Mark Twain was talking about in his essay “On the Decay of the Art of Lying” argued that she doesn’t tell a lie in any circumstance, but Mark Twain confronted her by telling her that she is wrong, “we are all liars. There are no exceptions,” he said. He …show more content…

On the one hand, I think lying is not always the answer; I personally avoid telling a lie because if you are going to lie you have to be carefully thinking about the consequences that those bring. I know that big lies can be a problem. For example, hiding your relationship with someone saying that you are single when you are not. That would bring so many consequences for yourself and for others too. That is why it is better to not tell big lies because that would affect you and other people negatively. On the other hand, I believe that lying is a necessity in certain circumstances. For example, we tend to lie to others in little things like their appearance or when they give us a bad present, we lied to not hurt their feelings and to not be rude to them. I think that those small polite lies are okay to say in order to make people feel good about themselves and to keep their affection. I agree with Mark Twain when he said, “lie for other’s advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, and