TRUTH QUOTES XVII

quotations about truth

Truth is, whatever may be said to the contrary, superior to all fictions. One ought never to regret seeing clearer into the depths.

JAMES PLATT

Platt's Essays


Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.

AMBROSE BIERCE

"Epigrams of a Cynic"


Truth and virtue are flowers that die not.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

Tags: Leonardo da Vinci


Truth travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster.

ARIANA FRANKLIN

Mistress of the Art of Death

Tags: Ariana Franklin


The best way to deceive a knave is to tell him the truth.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts

Tags: Ivan Panin


I tried to put a bird in a cage.
O fool that I am!
For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

The Fool's Song

Tags: William Carlos Williams


I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."

KEN KESEY

Sometimes a Great Notion

Tags: Ken Kesey


They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

FANNY KEMBLE

Further Records, February 8, 1875

Tags: Fanny Kemble


Let us continue to improve until we are filled with the knowledge of the truth. We have yet much to learn.

BRIGHAM YOUNG

Journal of Discourses

Tags: Brigham Young


Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

letter to Elizabeth Pelham, January 4, 1939

Tags: William Butler Yeats


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

Tags: Antonin Artaud


If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

Lectures on Art and Poems

Tags: Washington Allston


The cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.

ROBINSON JEFFERS

"Be Angry at the Sun"

Tags: Robinson Jeffers


Condemn not truth for error's deeds.

MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN

"Flowers and Weeds"

Tags: Martha Lavinia Hoffman


Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: John Locke


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


Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth;
And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


It might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of spirit should be measured according to how much of the "truth" one could still barely endure--or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Beyond Good and Evil

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche