TRUTH QUOTES XV

quotations about truth


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I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

ELIF BATUMAN
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The Possessed


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Tags: Elif Batuman


If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook E", Aphorisms

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


Some sorts of truth are truer than others.

JACK LONDON

John Barleycorn

Tags: Jack London


The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.

LOUISE ERDRICH

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Tags: Louise Erdrich


Truth is not only a man's ornament but his instrument; it is the great man's glory, and the poor man's stock: a man's truth is his livelihood, his recommendation, his letters of credit.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote


The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Infinite Jest

Tags: David Foster Wallace


With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Truth", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

Tags: Francis Bacon


I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

Collected Stories and Other Writings

Tags: Katherine Anne Porter


No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


But that battered word, truth, having made its appearance here, confronts one immediately with a series of riddles and has, moreover, since so many gospels are preached, the unfortunate tendency to make one belligerent.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: James Baldwin


O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Tags: Albert Camus


The best way to deceive a knave is to tell him the truth.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts

Tags: Ivan Panin


We cannot make things true by any amount of effort; we can merely discover what God has made true from all eternity.

HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS

Re-statements of Christian Doctrine

Tags: Henry Whitney Bellows


How sweet is truth to the understanding! And, when spoken in a language every word of which is familiar, how harmonious it sounds to the ear by which the sentiments find their way to the heart!

HOSEA BALLOU

A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation

Tags: Hosea Ballou


Truth is literally that which is without secrecy, what discloses itself without a veil.

R. D. LAING

attributed, R. D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy

Tags: R. D. Laing


The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.

THOMAS CARLYLE

The French Revolution: A History

Tags: Thomas Carlyle


In the end, the truth finds a way to surface even if you don't want it to.

JENNIFER LOPEZ

True Love

Tags: Jennifer Lopez


Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook C", Aphorisms

Tags: Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg