quotations about truth
If you handle truth carelessly, it will cut your fingers.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Lower a bucket into a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth, mustn't it?
CHARLES READE
The Cloister and the Hearth
Thorough truthfulness--truthfulness to others and to ourselves--is a rare virtue; and he who indeed acts upon it is the noblest of all heroes.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
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
The Possessed
If any man dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Cancer
Truth is too precious a commodity to be wasted upon mere idolators.
HERNANDEZ CORTEZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
Some sorts of truth are truer than others.
JACK LONDON
John Barleycorn
Truth is a pillar erected by God, and upholdeth the universe.
JAMES LINEN
"Desultorious Chronicles", The Poetical and Prose Writings of James Linen
I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Collected Stories and Other Writings
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, January 8, 1925
Condemn not truth for error's deeds.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Flowers and Weeds"
Truth is within ourselves.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
If the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence of truth, but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines, as to a health-giving medicine, until it obtained from God, by its faith and piety, the grace needed to heal it, they who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language, would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and hurtful than ever, to such an extent that even after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man, they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable fancies, either on account of their great blindness, which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on account of their opinionative obstinacy, which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
Each man has in him the potential to realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realize it.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
In Quest of Democracy
Truth is not simply what is believed. A lie believed is still a lie.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon