TRUTH QUOTES V

quotations about truth

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

Tags: Francis Bacon


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


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


How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth!

SOPHOCLES

Oedipus Rex


Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.

MARK AKENSIDE

The Pleasures of Imagination

Tags: Mark Akenside


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

Tags: Sir Thomas Browne


Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.

EMILY DICKINSON

letter to T. W. Higginson, 1870

Tags: Emily Dickinson


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

Tags: Doris Lessing


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


For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


Who dares to say that he alone has found the truth?

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The New England Tragedies

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Some things are too terrible to be true.

BOB DYLAN

"Honest With Me"

Tags: Bob Dylan


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

Tags: Saul Bellow


Truth is the bread of a noble manhood.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.

WOODY ALLEN

Deconstructing Harry

Tags: Woody Allen


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

Tags: Daniel J. Levitin


When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

No Country for Old Men

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims, Characters and Reflections


The greatest truths are the simplest.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust


We must not put Truth into the place of a means, but into the place of an end.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms