quotations about truth
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--
And how is one to know what is Truth? He thinks one thing before lunch; after a stirring bout with corned beef and onions the shining vision is strangely altered. Which is Truth?
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
When we mean to touch the heart, we always speak the truth in some degree. It is our last resource; and if it were our first, we should have less to lament.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
No one wants it to be true. But the truth doesn't care what anyone wants.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Truth was truth, whether I darkened my eyes to it or not.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
If power does not listen to truth, power will reap its own destruction.
PAUL TYSON
"Adults in the Room, by Yanis Varoufakis", Open Democracy, May 11, 2017
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
I don't deal in unvarnished truths. It's the varnish that counts. That makes it true.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance
That which is not formed of truth is of bad texture.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
WOODY ALLEN
Deconstructing Harry
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"
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
Truth and Good are one; and Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth!
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus Rex
We grease the truth with rhyme.
NIK HOUSER
"A Beginner's Guide to Sandcastle Alchemy", Weird Tales, Summer 2011
We are too small, all but a few of us, to hold more than a little of the truth.
JOHN C. BAILEY
The Claims of French Poetry
There is an inherent and absolute authority in all truth, which makes it, in the end, unconquerable and victorious. The truth is mighty, and will prevail. What is founded on error, has rottenness for its corner-stone; and although it may temporarily be upheld by foreign aid, yet, deserted by its supporters, it always finally tumbles to the ground.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections