quotations about truth
Truth is the right hand of God.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.
FANNY KEMBLE
Further Records, February 8, 1875
There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
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
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
"Stammbuch"
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
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
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
For simple are the words of truth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Hoplon Krisis
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like the sun, only for a time.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Truth travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
letter, September 6, 1955
Some that will hold a creed unto martyrdom will not hold the truth against a sneering laugh.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Some sorts of truth are truer than others.
JACK LONDON
John Barleycorn
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
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
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
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
Although the truth is not always pleasant, the truth is always a gift because it offers the recipient of that information the chance to change the outcome.
DENISE RESTAURI
"Four Words That Give This CEO The Courage To Take On The Beauty Industry", Forbes, December 8, 2016
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