quotations about truth
Truth is a pillar erected by God, and upholdeth the universe.
JAMES LINEN
"Desultorious Chronicles", The Poetical and Prose Writings of James Linen
Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
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
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Truth", Essays
It might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of spirit should be measured according to how much of the "truth" one could still barely endure--or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
If you handle truth carelessly, it will cut your fingers.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
When we walk towards the sun of Truth, all shadows are cast behind us.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
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
Truth -- there's no such thing.
TANKRED DORST
Freedom for Clemens
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
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.
REBECCA WEST
The Meaning of Treason
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
I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Collected Stories and Other Writings
Truth is, whatever may be said to the contrary, superior to all fictions. One ought never to regret seeing clearer into the depths.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Trump's relationship to the truth seems novel, if only because he doesn't try to hide his relativism. For Trump, truth is always more about how people feel than what may be empirically verifiable. Trump admits as much in The Art of the Deal, where he describes his sales strategy as "truthful hyperbole." For Trump, facts are fragile, and truth is flexible. Trump probably doesn't spend evenings poring over Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge -- but the parallels between Trump's attacks on accepted knowledge and critical philosophy's insistence that we interrogate truth claims suggest that not all assaults on the authority of facts are revolutionary.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017
There must be repressed truth even in lies.
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ
The Madman and the Nun
The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of sorrow.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt