quotations about truth
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
Old Time was young, men's hearts were all untried
By Grief and Sin, when round this whirling ball
Pure Truth and Falsehood journeyed side by side
In free companionship. At evenfall
Of that long day which closed the Age of Gold
They came to Pleasure's lake, and both were glad
To cast their robes and seek those waters cold.
But Falsehood, first emerging, lightly clad
Her limbs in Truth's white garments, fresh and fair,
And swiftly fled away with mocking mirth;
While Truth, disdaining Falsehood's tattered wear,
Pursued. So still around the dizzy earth
Flies Falsehood, well-disguised in Truth's array,
While Truth runs after, naked to the day.
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
"Truth and Falsehood"
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
There must be repressed truth even in lies.
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ
The Madman and the Nun
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
One truth a man lives is worth a thousand he only utters.
EPICHARMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
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
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
How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Lucky Jim
The truth has no need to be uttered to be made apparent, and ... one may perhaps gather it with more certainty, without waiting for words and without even taking any account of them, from countless outward signs, even from certain invisible phenomena, analogous in the sphere of human character to what atmospheric changes are in the physical world.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
The longest sword, the strongest lungs, the most voices, are false measures of Truth.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Education and time may improve and augment the uses of truth, but cannot alter the structure, which is ever the same--as proceeding from the Eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
We shall find some things that are true, and some that are new, but very few things that are both true and new.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truth, to my mind, beats fiction for dramatic interest.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs us, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
Truth is strong enough to overcome all human sophistries.
AESCHINES
Timarchum
No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs -- the truth from the beginning.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women