quotations about truth
There must be repressed truth even in lies.
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ
The Madman and the Nun
There is no higher religion than the truth.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
The Essential Works of Helena Blavatsky
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
The strict conservative says that truth is in danger. It is the idlest fear in the world. It plainly indicates no intimacy with the truth. He who has communed with great principles knows that they are everlasting, and that nothing can shake them from their orbits. He is willing to trust truth in every encounter, knowing it to be eternal and omnipotent.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.
PAUL FEYERABEND
Against Method
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"
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"
No point in ignoring the truth. Doesn't make it worse to have it said out loud.
STEPHENIE MEYER
The Host
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Truth", Essays
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
Let us continue to improve until we are filled with the knowledge of the truth. We have yet much to learn.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
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
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on Virginia
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
lecture at Workers' Educational Association, May 1940
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety.
SATHYA SAI BABA
Thought for the Day, October 5, 2008
When the love of truth rules in the heart, the light of truth will guide the practice.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes--never!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Truth, to my mind, beats fiction for dramatic interest.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts