quotations about truth
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
City of Illusions
To take thought, to take truth, and translate them into life--that is the hard, hard battle.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
The concept of truth has clearly fallen on hard times, and the consequences of rejecting it are ravaging human society. Falsehood is so appealingly packaged that without good knowledge of the truth, one could be misled and ensnared. However, acquaintance with the truth would help identify the length and breath of falsehood, unmask and demystify its attendant effect.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Whatever of truth or approximation to truth we have attained, we must hold to it with tenacity and assurance as the truth for us and for the time; must hold to it to live and die by. It seems to me that this fidelity to the conviction of the hour, truth will not dispense with. If a man holds faintly and indecisively to what of truth he has attained, I do not see how he can gain any more beyond. Nevertheless, we must hold it in readiness to give it up the hour that a new or larger truth is revealed. For truth in our minds, our vision of it, is not a finality, but a march. And the moment the word is given, we must strike our tent, without a sigh.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Let us not expect men to see truth before it is shown them; they do not see it afterwards.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people -- as may be noticed of most young children -- does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.
DOROTHY CATHERINE FONTANA
"The Enterprise Incident", Star Trek
It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Vicar of Wakefield
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
IAIN M. BANKS
Inversions
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
Still another condition of knowing the truth is, I think, the willingness to make some sacrifice for it.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
MAXIM GORKY
The Lower Depths