quotations about truth
Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!
URSULA K. LE GUIN
introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness
Not everything that's true needs to be said.
CASSANDRA CLARE
City of Bones
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Little Foxes
Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
EUGENE O'NEILL
The Iceman Cometh
And diff'ring judgments serve but to declare
That truth lies somewhere, if we knew but where.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
So stands Truth before worshipping man; and so she speaks to him. Truth shrouded in mystery; clothed in light; transcending our power to look upon her full and ample proportions. No man has seen her altogether as she is. Yet many a soul, gazing earnestly, reverently, has beheld the outlines; caught here and there a lineament, a feature; has seen that, when the veil has for a moment been parted, which has excited and enraptured him, and of which he has sought to speak to others. And they have, perhaps gladly, perhaps incredulously, listened to his report. No one has ever seen the whole of Truth. And because of that, and of the imperfection of the eyes which have looked, and of the words in which they have reported, the fragmentary reports men have brought back of what they have seen have been so various and seemed so contradictory. But it does not follow, because human philosophies, sciences, theologies, which are these reports, have been so various and fleeting--it does not follow that there is no reality; but only that men have had imperfect and fragmentary vision of the reality; and made imperfect and fragmentary report of it.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
"Truth"
If you seek truth, you will not seek by every means to gain a victory; and if you have found truth, you will have the gain of not being defeated.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Truth is always revolutionary.
ELIAS KHOURY
"Truth is always revolutionary", Malta Today, August 30, 2016
If a man lived in a desert for six months without food, drink or companionship he would be reasonably free from prejudice and would be in a condition to enunciate great truths. But even then his vision of reality would have been warped by so much sand and so many sunsets. Even if he survived and brought us his Truth with all the gravity and long night-gown of a Hindu faker, as soon as any one listened to him his message would no longer be Truth. The complexion of his audience, the very shape of their noses, would subtly undermine his magnificent aloofness.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
Nothing is absolute any longer. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.
MORDECAI RICHLER
Son of a Smaller Hero
There are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
An honest man speaks truth, though it may give offense; a vain man, in order that it may.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Let us seek truth everywhere; let us cull it wherever we can find its blossom or its seed. Having found the seed let us scatter it to the winds of heaven. Whenever it may come, whithersoever it may blow, it will be able to germinate.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
The Forerunners
But thou, my son, study to make prevail
One colour in thy life, the hue of truth.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Merope
The truth can only be recalled, never invented.
MARILYN MONROE
diary, Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
No two things can be so contradictory, so much at variance as truth and falsehood; and yet none are so mixed and united.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men's opinions.
DANIEL DEFOE
The History of the Union Between England and Scotland
Truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
History of Sexuality