TRUTH QUOTES XXIII

quotations about truth

Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

City of Illusions

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


History, mythology, and folktales are filled with stories of people punished for saying the truth. Only the Fool, exempt from society's rules, is allowed to speak with complete freedom.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

lecture at Workers' Educational Association, May 1940

Tags: Virginia Woolf


It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

ROBERT FROST

"The Black Cottage"

Tags: Robert Frost


So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!

HORACE MANN

Thoughts


Some folk never handle the truth without scratching it.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


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 only a question of point of view.

KARL LAGERFELD

Vice Magazine, February 28, 2010

Tags: Karl Lagerfeld


Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

Sohrab and Rustum

Tags: Matthew Arnold


You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety.

SATHYA SAI BABA

Thought for the Day, October 5, 2008


But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes
That look on it! the diverse things they see!

GEORGE MEREDITH

"A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt"

Tags: George Meredith


For decades, critical social scientists and humanists have chipped away at the idea of truth. We've deconstructed facts, insisted that knowledge is situated and denied the existence of objectivity. The bedrock claim of critical philosophy, going back to Kant, is simple: We can never have certain knowledge about the world in its entirety. Claiming to know the truth is therefore a kind of assertion of power.

CASEY WILLIAMS

"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017


One truth teacheth another.

SIR J. REYNOLDS

attributed, Day's Collacon


The truth--a hideous spectacle!

CONRAD AIKEN

"Youth Penetrant"

Tags: Conrad Aiken


There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


Truth often spoils the dinner.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

IAIN M. BANKS

Inversions

Tags: Iain M. Banks


Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

GEORGE ELIOT

Middlemarch

Tags: George Eliot


Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

"A Liberal Decalogue", New York Times Magazine, December 16, 1951

Tags: Bertrand Russell