quotations about truth
When we mean to touch the heart, we always speak the truth in some degree. It is our last resource; and if it were our first, we should have less to lament.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth!
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus Rex
A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Nothing feels sexier than wearing the beautiful truth.
COURTNEY STODDEN
Twitter post, October 6, 2011
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Nootbook
All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
WOODY ALLEN
Deconstructing Harry
For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
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
Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Truth is the bread of a noble manhood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Who dares to say that he alone has found the truth?
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The New England Tragedies
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, 1870
Some things are too terrible to be true.
BOB DYLAN
"Honest With Me"
One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music
When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
The greatest truths are the simplest.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters