quotations about truth
Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
We grease the truth with rhyme.
NIK HOUSER
"A Beginner's Guide to Sandcastle Alchemy", Weird Tales, Summer 2011
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Annajanska
I am quite prepared to admit that being habitual liars and self-deluders, we have good cause to fear the truth, but I'm not at all ready to stop hoping. There may be some truths that are, after all, our friends in the universe.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a story is true, the whole story turns out to be false?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
The greatest truths are the simplest.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The truth is always the same ... and the wants of the human heart are not widely different.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
There is an inherent and absolute authority in all truth, which makes it, in the end, unconquerable and victorious. The truth is mighty, and will prevail. What is founded on error, has rottenness for its corner-stone; and although it may temporarily be upheld by foreign aid, yet, deserted by its supporters, it always finally tumbles to the ground.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Truth is a gem which will only reflect the rays that come direct from heaven.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
You have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping.
NICHOLAS BLACK ELK
Black Elk Speaks
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
MAX BORN
attributed, The New Intimacy
We're not given the chance to choose absolute truth. Truth's always two-faced. The only thing we have is the right to reject the lie we find most repugnant.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
Night Watch
If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.
FRANCES WRIGHT
Course of Popular Lectures
One handles truths like dynamite.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anais Nin
Some things are too terrible to be true.
BOB DYLAN
"Honest With Me"
The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions