quotations about truth
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to Elizabeth Pelham, January 4, 1939
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
All men need truth as they need water; if wise men are as high grounds where the springs rise, ordinary men are the lower grounds which their waters nourish.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
When the love of truth rules in the heart, the light of truth will guide the practice.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Truth, to my mind, beats fiction for dramatic interest.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
IAIN M. BANKS
Inversions
Truth is always opposed to the destructiveness of deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy. Although deviances may have their moment, truth must be forever upheld, for in due time, it will have its victory.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
Truth has her sterner responsibilities sooner or later in store for those who have known anything about her.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness", The Varieties of Religious Experience
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
The longest sword, the strongest lungs, the most voices, are false measures of Truth.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
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
But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
North and South
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Truth is that which is. It seems to me that the important thing is for the mind to be in a state when it can allow itself not to ask, not to demand, which does not mean acquiescence, acceptance, but that the mind is really silent.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
"What was true yesterday is not true today", The New Indian Express, March 2, 2017
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880