quotations about truth
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
We shall find some things that are true, and some that are new, but very few things that are both true and new.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
We're told that we're living in a post-truth (or post-factual) era, a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, a culture that eschews a foundation of solid facts. Indeed, it is said that in this post-truth time, facts have become "secondary" if not entirely irrelevant. But who gets stuck with this "post-truth" label -- and it is typically used as an insult -- is not so simple.
GILBERT DOCTOROW
"Complexities of a 'Post-Truth' Era", Consortium News, May 11, 2017
When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Education and time may improve and augment the uses of truth, but cannot alter the structure, which is ever the same--as proceeding from the Eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
History, mythology, and folktales are filled with stories of people punished for saying the truth. Only the Fool, exempt from society's rules, is allowed to speak with complete freedom.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
lecture at Workers' Educational Association, May 1940
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Truth is always opposed to the destructiveness of deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy. Although deviances may have their moment, truth must be forever upheld, for in due time, it will have its victory.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
Truth rides a long road.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety.
SATHYA SAI BABA
Thought for the Day, October 5, 2008
As the snow before the sun, even so is a polished lie before the naked truth.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Physics, God, and the End of the World
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Nun of Nidaros", Tales of a Wayside Inn
The truth is never dangerous. Except when told.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER
"A Bolter and the Invincible Summer"
There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880