quotations about truth
There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
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
Were truth our uttered language, Angels might talk with men.
GERALD MASSEY
"The World is Full of Beauty"
Each man has in him the potential to realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realize it.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
In Quest of Democracy
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Men never make truths; they only recognize the value of this currency of God. They find truths, as men sometimes find bills, in the street, and only recognize the value of that which other persons have drawn.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth;
And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
The demands of Truth are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Poetic Principle"
They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.
FANNY KEMBLE
Further Records, February 8, 1875
Truth and virtue are flowers that die not.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"University Education", Fact and Fiction
Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
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 travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Condemn not truth for error's deeds.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Flowers and Weeds"
Half truths were a wonderful way to inspire credibility.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Winner
I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it, just like a lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch.
ANN PATCHETT
Truth and Beauty
If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems