quotations about truth
The sad truth is the truth is sad.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital
Truth was truth, whether I darkened my eyes to it or not.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
If you want to see the truth, you must be brave enough to look.
RUNE LAZULI
That which is not formed of truth is of bad texture.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.
DEMOSTHENES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
WOODY ALLEN
Deconstructing Harry
Dark should torch of Truth be never,
For it burns with love divine.
Light it should all people, nations,
In our hearts should be its shrine.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Truth's Torch"
If power does not listen to truth, power will reap its own destruction.
PAUL TYSON
"Adults in the Room, by Yanis Varoufakis", Open Democracy, May 11, 2017
Truth never hurts the teller.
ROBERT BROWNING
Fifine at the Fair
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 are too small, all but a few of us, to hold more than a little of the truth.
JOHN C. BAILEY
The Claims of French Poetry
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
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
The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
We grease the truth with rhyme.
NIK HOUSER
"A Beginner's Guide to Sandcastle Alchemy", Weird Tales, Summer 2011
Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Future of the Theater