quotations about truth
Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Truth could be violent, could strip you of dignity and hope just as quickly as a gun.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
"Here Be Dragons"
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
There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulent as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
No point in ignoring the truth. Doesn't make it worse to have it said out loud.
STEPHENIE MEYER
The Host
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Blight
Education and time may improve and augment the uses of truth, but cannot alter the structure, which is ever the same--as proceeding from the Eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
As the snow before the sun, even so is a polished lie before the naked truth.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
A half-truth does more mischief than a whole lie.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Truth draws strength from itself and not from the number of votes in its favour.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Address to the International Diplomats, March 18, 2006
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
There is no higher religion than the truth.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
The Essential Works of Helena Blavatsky
There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
The truth is never dangerous. Except when told.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
One truth teacheth another.
SIR J. REYNOLDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Nature expresses a design of love and truth.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Encyclical Letter, Caritas in Veritate, June 29, 2009
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought