quotations about truth
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
ANAÏS NIN
diary, Fall 1943
Human truth is always soiled with falsehood.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth is the backbone of character. Nothing is beautiful or strong or permanent without truth. All qualifications that go to make up noble manhood count for naught where there is not a persistent adherence to truthfulness. As the mirror reflects objects as they are, without alteration, so truth presents everything as it is.
HENRY F. KLETZING
"Truth"
So stands Truth before worshipping man; and so she speaks to him. Truth shrouded in mystery; clothed in light; transcending our power to look upon her full and ample proportions. No man has seen her altogether as she is. Yet many a soul, gazing earnestly, reverently, has beheld the outlines; caught here and there a lineament, a feature; has seen that, when the veil has for a moment been parted, which has excited and enraptured him, and of which he has sought to speak to others. And they have, perhaps gladly, perhaps incredulously, listened to his report. No one has ever seen the whole of Truth. And because of that, and of the imperfection of the eyes which have looked, and of the words in which they have reported, the fragmentary reports men have brought back of what they have seen have been so various and seemed so contradictory. But it does not follow, because human philosophies, sciences, theologies, which are these reports, have been so various and fleeting--it does not follow that there is no reality; but only that men have had imperfect and fragmentary vision of the reality; and made imperfect and fragmentary report of it.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
"Truth"
Questions don't change the truth. But they give it motion.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
Empire of Dreams
Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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
Truth is truth, though from an enemy, and spoken in malice.
GEORGE LILLO
George Barnwell; or, the London Merchant
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The usefulest truths are the plainest.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
The truth
Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives
By suffering.
Nothing speaks the truth,
Nothing tells us how things really are,
Nothing forces us to know
What we do not want to know
Except pain.
And this is how the gods declare their love.
AESCHYLUS
The Oresteia
With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Some truths may be proclaimed upon the housetop; others may be spoken by the fireside; still others must be whispered in the ear of a friend.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
It is dangerous to follow truth too near, lest she should kick out our teeth.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Truth makes on the surface of nature no one track of light -- every eye looking on finds its own.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Caxtoniana
Truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
History of Sexuality
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Anthony Collins, October 30, 1703
The truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
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