Deceit, Desire, & the Novel by Rene Girard

“Only someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is truly an object of hatred. The person who hates first hates himself for the secret admiration concealed by his hatred. In an effort to hide this desperate admiration from others, and from himself, he no longer wants to see in his mediator anything but an obstacle. The secondary role of the mediator thus becomes primary, concealing his original function of a model scrupulously imitated.”
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”…it is pride which sooner or later makes us a slave to someone else…”
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”A single lie encompassing the whole of existence is not preferable morally to a series of temporary lies.”
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”The secret of success, in business as well as in love, is dissimulation. One must hide the desire one feels and pretend a desire one does not feel.”
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”We pretend we are free but we are not telling the truth. We are hypnotized by ridiculous gods and our suffering is doubled by the knowledge that they are ridiculous. Like the man from the underground we gravitate around these gods in a comfortless orbit fixed by the balance of contrary forces.”

-Rene Girard, 1961