quotations about truth
You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
The Cream of the Jest
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"
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction ... for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Club of Queer Trades
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
Fairer than all fancies is the truth.
CAROLINE SPENCER
"A Vigil"
Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not.
ANONYMOUS
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
You're never going to see the truth. [It's] what you're shooting for always and you always miss it. Every once in a while, you catch an edge of it. That's what's you hope for, I think, as an artist.
SAM SHEPARD
interview, 2005
Truth, to my mind, beats fiction for dramatic interest.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Truth is the edict of God.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Truth never was indebted to a lie.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Truth wears an unchanging countenance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don't have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in -- then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916
As the snow before the sun, even so is a polished lie before the naked truth.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Truth is always opposed to the destructiveness of deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy. Although deviances may have their moment, truth must be forever upheld, for in due time, it will have its victory.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
TRUTH, such as it appears to us, can only be relative, because we ourselves, being relative creatures, have only a relative perception and judgment. We appreciate that which is true to ourselves, not that which is universally true. And truth may well assume an aspect to one different from that it assumes to another.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity