quotations about truth
Truth never was indebted to a lie.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Truth could be violent, could strip you of dignity and hope just as quickly as a gun.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
"Here Be Dragons"
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Supreme truths are the foundation on which repose the state of human society.
POPE LEO XIII
attributed, Day's Collacon
Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people -- as may be noticed of most young children -- does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
I see in the act of throwing the dice and of risking the affirmation of some intuitively felt truth, however uncertain, my whole reason for living.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Kingdom of Fear
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
The unclouded eye was better, no matter what it saw.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
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 often spoils the dinner.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
Some folk never handle the truth without scratching it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The truth--a hideous spectacle!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Penetrant"
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER
"A Bolter and the Invincible Summer"
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