Great Expectations Lies and Deceit Quotes

“A man can’t starve; at least I can’t. I took some wittles, up at the willage over yonder, – where the church stands a’most out on the marshes.” “You mean stole,” said the sergeant. “And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s…It was some broken wittles – that’s what it was – and a dram of liquor, and a pie.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 5. When Magwitch is cornered and captured by soldiers, the escaped convict shows himself to an honorable character. He nobly takes the blame upon himself for stealing the food from blacksmith Joe. It was Pip who actually did the stealing, but Magwitch lies and says that he was the thief. He doesn’t want Pip to get in trouble and so protects him from blame. This shows Magwitch’s loyalty towards Pip.

It was much upon my mind (particularly when I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe’s confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 6. Young Pip is in a moral dilemma whether he should tell Joe the truth about stealing food and a file to help the escaped convict. However, he decides not to and allows Joe continue believing it was the convict who stole from the forge. Pip fear of losing Joe’s friendship and good opinion of him stop him from confessing.

I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 6. Pip regrets not owning up to his actions in helping runaway convict Magwitch with food and a file he stole from the Gargerys. The themes of integrity, guilt and deception are highlighted here as the older Pip in hindsight recognizes his own moral failings when he was a boy. Young Pip is walking back to the forge with Joe and Mr. Wopsle at the time and agonizes over whether to confess the truth to Joe. However, he decides to conceal his role in the convict’s escape from Joe. Pip’s adult self as the narrator looks back on the incident and sees his silence as cowardice. To the young Pip protecting his reputation was more important than integrity.

“It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true…it’s lies, Joe.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 9. Pip admits to lying to Joe, his sister and Uncle Pumblechook about his visit to Miss Havisham’s. They believe sensational lies that he tells about Miss Havisham sitting in a velvet coach, the company being served cake and wine on gold plates, four giant dogs fighting for veal cutlets out of a silver basket, and everyone waving flags and swords for entertainment. Pip feels guilty about deceiving Joe with his fabrications and privately confesses to him that it was all a lie.

I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn’t been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 9. Pip explains his motivation for making up sensational stories about a velvet coach, giant dogs, and being fed from gold plates during his visit to Satis House. It was to cover up his shame at feeling he was common, after the beautiful young Estella Havisham told him so.

“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don’t you tell no more of ’em, Pip. That ain’t the way to get out of being common, old chap.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 9. After Pip admits to making up stories about what went on at Miss Havisham’s, the upright and honest Joe rebukes him. Pip lied about his visit there with sensational stories because Estella had told him he was common. But Joe, a highly principled man of integrity, warns Pip that lying is not the way to elevate your social status. In a world where many people follow the path of social pretensions and dishonesty, Joe offers Pip a moral compass to guide his life by. A father figure to Pip, he is anxious that Pip lives by a code of honesty and integrity.

There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 11. Miss Havisham may be nasty and unpleasant, but she mostly wears this openly and honestly. However, the relatives that hover around her are the worst kind of hypocrites and sycophants. They are flatterers who pretend to like Miss Havisham because they want her money when she dies. Among the pretenders Pip meets in Satis House are Mrs. Camilla, Cousin Raymond, Sarah Pocket and Georgina. He takes an immediate dislike to them, labeling them “toadies and humbugs,” or dishonest and deceptive people. Dickens uses these characters to satirize the insincerity, superficiality and greed of London’s high society. They embody that society’s absurdities and flaws.

Scattered wits take a long time picking up; and often before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in all directions by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 17. Pip is conflicted between being content with life at the forge and his aspirations to become a gentleman and win the attentions of Estella. He believes that Miss Havisham is the one who will help him advance his social status and become wealthy. But Pip is jumping to unrealistic conclusions and deceiving himself here. Other than help him become an apprentice and give him a guinea each year, Miss Havisham has given him no reason to believe she is going to make him his fortune.

At those times, I would decide conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company with Biddy, – when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again… perhaps after all Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. At times Pip appears to embrace the working class life with its promise of a partnership at Joe’s forge and close relationship with Biddy. But his head is quickly turned by the lure of the wealthy life he remembers from his visits to the upper class Havisham mansion. This memory, he says in a simile, hits him “like a destructive missile.” He goes on to fantasize that Miss Havisham will make his fortune for him, which there is no evidence of. This is an example of self-deception on the part of Pip and his overactive imagination.

My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. Pip is shocked by the news of his inheritance. Jaggers has warned him that the name of his benefactor must remain a secret. But Pip has already made up his mind that he has Miss Havisham to thank for his good fortune. Pip has deceived himself into believing that the upper class Miss Havisham has taken a great interest in him, wishes to make him a gentleman and is his new benefactor. But the irony is that the convict Magwitch will be revealed to be his mysterious patron.

Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish games at sums, and how we had gone together to have me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he had ever been my favourite fancy and my chosen friend? If I had taken ten times as many glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he never had stood in that relation towards me, and should in my heart of hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a sensible, practical, good-hearted prime fellow.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. When Pip rises from relative poverty to riches, some people like Mr. Pumblechook begin to treat him differently. The insincere Pumblechook who abused and neglected Pip as a child now fawns over and flatters him. Rewriting history, he pretends to have been Pip’s friend and to have played an important role in securing his apprenticeship. While Pip sees through the pretense, he enjoys the flattery.

“Ay, ay!” said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah, with delight. “I have seen Mr. Jaggers. I have heard about it, Pip. So you go to-morrow?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
“And you are adopted by a rich person?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
“Not named?”
“No, Miss Havisham.”
“And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was her enjoyment of Sarah Pocket’s jealous dismay.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. Miss Havisham plays the deception game well in this exchange between herself and Pip in front of her relatives. They believe she has given Pip a large amount of money. Pip, thinking that Miss Havisham is the rich fairy godmother who has adopted him, has gone to see her to thank her for her supposed generosity. Here she is happy to discuss news of his “great expectations” in front of her cousin Sarah Pocket. She is encouraging the belief that she is Pip’s benefactor in order to spite her relatives. But it is also to manipulate Pip into falling in love with Estella so she can break his heart, part of Miss Havisham’s twisted plot to get revenge on men.

“It is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket explains to him about Miss Havisham’s disastrous relationship with Compeyson, quoting his father Matthew Pocket about the conman. Truly good actions come from a good heart and Compeyson did not have a true manner or heart, he says. His father’s metaphor about varnish being unable to hide the grain of the wood is telling us that a person’s true nature cannot be faked.

This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he must hold and manage it all.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Herbert tells Pip the story of Miss Havisham’s heartbreak. Not only did fiancé Compeyson abandon her at the altar on her wedding day, but he was a conman who never loved her. He manipulated, deceived and conned her out of her money with the help of co-conspirator Arthur Havisham, Miss Havisham’s half-brother. The scheme involved her buying out Arthur’s share of the family brewery for an immense sum, on the pretense that Compeyson would manage it after they married.

These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 25. Money certainly changes how people treat you, as Pip learns when Miss Havisham’s relatives react to his newfound wealth. He knows that they hate him because they think Miss Havisham has given him money from their inheritance. But because he is rich they pretend to like and admire him and treat him with more respect than when he was poor.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretense of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 28. The novel takes Pip on a long journey of self-deception and eventual self-discovery. Narrator of the story is the older Pip who is able to look back on his younger self and critically analyze his behavior and decisions. In this instance the social climbing Pip decides to return to his home town when he learns that Estella is looking for him. He debates whether to stay at his old home, but life in London has given him notions about himself. After making up excuses to justify staying at the Blue Boar instead of Joe’s forge, he realizes that he is a “self-swindler.” Pip is learning that he has been living a lie. He uses the powerful metaphor of forged coins and swindlers to emphasize how self-deception is the worst deception of all. Foreshadowed here is Pip’s future disenchantment with his “great expectations.”

She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin, – in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. While he waits to go to Miss Havisham’s, Pip shares his thoughts of what he believes to be his patroness’s plans for him. The problem is that he deludes and deceives himself with this fairy tale-like dream. He imagines himself to be the young knight who will marry his love Estella and restore to life the decaying Satis House. And all this with the help and blessing of his fairy godmother Miss Havisham. That has certainly been Pip’s ambition and dream. But the theatrical imagery and language suggests it is all fantasy and a fairy tale that will have no fairy tale ending.

The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. Oh the agony of unrequited romantic love. Pip expresses his desperate, agonizing, hopeless love for a girl who cannot love him or any other man back. Estella remains his obsession, even though this love makes him miserable, defies logic and it is not reciprocated. But Pip simply cannot help himself. There is a sad irony to Pip’s admissions about his unconditional and destructive love. There is also a kind of self-deception in acknowledging that his love for Estella is not good for him, yet he still pursues it regardless.

Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood, – from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe, – from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 29. Pip’s blind unrequited love for Estella is seen here as a destructive force and example of his self-deception. It is a highly idealized love that elevates Estella to goddess-like status, as he sees visions of her everywhere. He knows that she has negatively impacted his life, giving him “wretched hankerings” for money and status, disturbing his childhood and causing him to be ashamed of home and Joe. Yet he spends his a lifetime trying be good enough for her and win her admiration.

And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 33. We witness Pip’s self-deception as he looks at the house in Richmond where Estella is staying. He has a romantic vision of living happily with her there, yet knows that he was never happy but always miserable with her. Pip’s obsessive love for Estella is highly idealized and unrealistic.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 34. Pip and his London friends keep up the appearance of living a happy and cheerful life by overspending on their lavish lifestyles. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. But as the older Pip as narrator reflects, this was an exercise in self-deception. Using the metaphor of the “skeleton truth,” he admits that this superficial exterior of enjoyment hid their real feelings of misery.

I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. This quote encapsulates Pip’s obsessive and unrequited love for Estella. It also highlights the hopelessness of his idealized romantic infatuation and the destructive powers of self-deception. He has deceived himself with the fantasy that he can have a happy future with the unobtainable Estella, despite her bringing him only misery.

“Do you want me then,” said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, “to deceive and entrap you?”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Estella is being very honest when she asks Pip if he wants her to “deceive and entrap” him in the matter of love. Estella cannot love anyone because of the way she was brought up, but Pip is hopelessly in love with her. While Estella is clearly warning him, we have the impression that Pip wants to deceived and entrapped by love.

Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I had.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. A horrified Pip learns that convict Magwitch and not Miss Havisham is the secret patron who has been using his wealth to turn Pip into a gentleman. The novel’s direction dramatically shifts as Pip realizes for the first time the truth about his “great expectations” and attempts to socially better himself. He has been deluding himself with the fantasy that Miss Havisham had been training him to be a gentleman so that he and Estella could be together. A metaphor comparing Pip to “a model with a mechanical heart” tells us of Pip’s feelings about being used as a toy for Miss Havisham to practice on in Satis House. The mist – which appears frequently in the story especially in the marshes around Pip’s home – has metaphorically cleared for Pip.

“I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that he is the benefactor so long unknown to me…I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all responsible for my mistakes and wrong conclusions; but I always supposed it was Miss Havisham.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. In conversation with Mr. Jaggers, Pip says that he has been told the convict Magwitch is his benefactor. However, he confesses to believing all along that Miss Havisham was the one who helped him – an example of Pip’s self-deception.

“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. Mr. Jaggers offers this advice to Pip, as he shares his own basic rule of life with him. He tells him not to make decisions based on looks, but rely instead to on concrete proof and verifiable evidence. Pip was saying how he thought Miss Havisham was his benefactor. But Jaggers a successful lawyer and expert on the law says there was no evidence for that. He is stressing the importance of avoiding self-deception, something Pip is prone to.

To my thinking, there was something in him that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner growing more familiar to me; but I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 40. All Pip can see when he looks at Magwitch is the convict. No amount of clothes that he has ordered for him to wear can disguise that. Pip believes it is not possible to make a gentleman out of him. That is emphasized by Pip’s use of a simile comparing Magwitch dragging one of his legs to someone wearing a leg-iron. The quote highlights the theme of deception and people trying to hide who they are. It also illustrates the theme of justice and the law.

“He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 42. Beware of first impressions, because appearances sometimes lie. Magwitch recounts to Pip how he met Compeyson at Epsom Races and was taken in by his outward appearance as an educated and smooth-talking gentleman. A skilled forger and schemer, Compeyson exploited Magwitch’s lack of education and social position and made him his partner in time. He eventually betrays him and turns him in.
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