quotations about truth
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
SAUL BELLOW
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Herzog
Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth;
And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Nun of Nidaros", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, May 8, 1796
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Truth", Essays
But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
North and South
There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulent as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
There's many a true word spoken in jest.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
I've always been suspicious of collective truths. I think an idea is true when it hasn't been put into words and that the moment it's put into words it becomes exaggerated. Because the moment it's put into words there's an abuse, an excess in the expression of the idea that makes it false.
EUGENE IONESCO
Conversations with Eugene Ionesco
The strict conservative says that truth is in danger. It is the idlest fear in the world. It plainly indicates no intimacy with the truth. He who has communed with great principles knows that they are everlasting, and that nothing can shake them from their orbits. He is willing to trust truth in every encounter, knowing it to be eternal and omnipotent.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
For simple are the words of truth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Hoplon Krisis
I do not think that so much harm is done by giving error to a child, as by giving truth in a lifeless form.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to Elizabeth Pelham, January 4, 1939
If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
OSCAR WILDE
The Critic as Artist