quotations about truth
But the truth is influential, it is powerful, it reaches the recesses of the mind. You cannot ask the truth not to exert its powers. The truth is one of the most important instruments in the people's struggle for food and freedom. We are out to exercise the occult powers of the truth.
JULIAN BECK
The Life of the Theatre
Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in its excess.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
The sad truth is the truth is sad.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital
Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
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
The most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
The Vital Illusion
If you want to see the truth, you must be brave enough to look.
RUNE LAZULI
That which is not formed of truth is of bad texture.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Each truth helps on the discovery of another.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I don't deal in unvarnished truths. It's the varnish that counts. That makes it true.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
I always tell the truth when I'm drunk. In vino vomitas.
GUY BELLAMY
The Man Who Won
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
We have great power to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and can a man deceive anyone so easily as himself?
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
We grease the truth with rhyme.
NIK HOUSER
"A Beginner's Guide to Sandcastle Alchemy", Weird Tales, Summer 2011
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Dark should torch of Truth be never,
For it burns with love divine.
Light it should all people, nations,
In our hearts should be its shrine.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Truth's Torch"
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise.
EMILY DICKINSON
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head