quotations about truth
Truth sometimes tastes like medicine, but that is an evidence that we are ill.
JOSEPH VON METZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.
PHILIP ROTH
The Human Stain
I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to George E. Pickett, February 22, 1841
Truth lies in a small compass, and if a well has been assigned her, for a habitation, it is as appropriate from its narrowness, as its depth.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truth is truth, though from an enemy, and spoken in malice.
GEORGE LILLO
George Barnwell; or, the London Merchant
It is far more difficult, I assure you, to live for the truth than to die for it.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
If we think we have found truth for ourselves, above all things, let us not impose it on one another. Let us lock upon it all the doors of consciousness. For however inspiring it may be to us, however ennobling, when once we try to impose it on another it becomes a poison.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Truth", Intimations
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
Entrust Truth, whatsoever thou hast from the Truth, and thou shalt lose nothing; and thy decay shall bloom again, and all thy diseases be healed, and thy mortal parts be reformed and renewed, and bound around thee.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Truth ...
Is a breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued it,
But never have I touched
The hem of its garment.
STEPHEN CRANE
The Black Riders and Other Lines
The usefulest truths are the plainest.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Truth, like good medicine, is oftentimes repugnant to our present feelings, but gives vigour afterwards.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
Questions don't change the truth. But they give it motion.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
Empire of Dreams
Will you tell me how a man's to live, and face his life, if he can't believe that truth's like a fire, and will burn through and be seen though it takes all the years there are? While I stand up and have breath in my lungs I shall be one flame of that fire; it's all the life I have.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Parerga and Paralipomena
Truth is not only a man's ornament but his instrument; it is the great man's glory, and the poor man's stock: a man's truth is his livelihood, his recommendation, his letters of credit.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Lower a bucket into a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth, mustn't it?
CHARLES READE
The Cloister and the Hearth