quotations about truth
Truth is both arms and armour.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
A thousand probabilities do not make one truth.
ITALIAN PROVERB
I never saw any good that came of telling truth.
JOHN DRYDEN
Amphitryon
Sweet Truth is a queen proud and mighty--
Her throne is in heaven above.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
Telling the truth is a beautiful act even if the truth itself is ugly.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
In all debates, let Truth be thy aim, not Victory.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
All you can do, every day, is to learn the truth as best you can.
SUSANNE ALLEYN
Game of Patience
No one wants it to be true. But the truth doesn't care what anyone wants.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
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
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
An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Future of the Theater
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
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 sad truth is the truth is sad.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital
God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing a while upon the roof and then fly away.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts