“He who knows not how to lie, knows not how to live.”
qui nescit dissimulare, nescit vivere.
I read this in my copy of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by Holbrook Jackson, who in the endnotes attributes this quotation to Frederick Barbarossa. I have also seen a variant of this saying, qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare attributed to Louis XI. If anyone knows anything about this maxim, please post it in the comments!
The maxim appears in two political treaties of the 1589. In Giovanni Botero’s La Ragion di Stato is attributed to the French king Louis XI (G. BOTERO, La ragion di Stato, Venetia, per Giovanni II & Giovanni Paolo Giolito de Ferrari, 1589). In Justus Lipsius’ Principorum, the same maxim is attributed to emperor Frederick or Sigmund (I. LIPSI, Politicorum sive Civilis Doctrinae Libri Sex Qui ad Principatum maxime spectant, Lugduni Batavorum, Ex officina plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1589, p. 145).
Errata Corrige: I. LIPSI, Politicorum sive Civilis Doctrinae Libri Sex Qui ad Principatum maxime spectant, Lugduni Batavorum, Ex officina plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1589, p. 209