“To speak falsely is the mark of a slave, but the truth is noble.”

— Apollonius of Tyana

to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 83
Letters

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 16, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To speak falsely is the mark of a slave, but the truth is noble." by Apollonius of Tyana?

Apollonius of Tyana photo

Apollonius of Tyana 14

Ancient Greek philosopher 15–100

Related quotes

“Pain will force even the truthful to speak falsely.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 232
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

“They speak falsely who say that truth is the daughter of time; it is the child of eternity, and as old as the Divine mind.”

George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman

Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race (1854)
Context: No science has been reached, no thought generated, no truth discovered, which has not from all time existed potentially in every human mind. The belief in the progress of the race does not, therefore, spring from the supposed possibility of his acquiring new faculties, or coming into the possession of a new nature.
Still less does truth vary. They speak falsely who say that truth is the daughter of time; it is the child of eternity, and as old as the Divine mind. The perception of it takes place in the order of time; truth itself knows nothing of the succession of ages. Neither does morality need to perfect itself; it is what it always has been, and always will be. Its distinctions are older than the sea or the dry land, than the earth or the sun. The relation of good to evil is from the beginning, and is unalterable.

“They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 4
"Stanzas on Freedom" (1843)

“It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed?
Whisper only, speak not loud,
Mark and leave him in the crowd.

Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have;
The free will serve thee like the slave,
Coward shrinking from the brave.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Captured Wild Horse

“There is a city, that for slaves
Has kings, and nations, winds, and waves:
St. Mark is conscious of her power,
His winged lion marks her tower.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“The right to own is the mark of a free man. The slave is a slave simply because he is denied that right. And because the free man is secure in the possession and enjoyment of what he produces, and the slave is not, the spur to production is in one and not in the other.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 47

“How can slaves be sent by Allah? You all have hairless faces, the mark of the bondman.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

“Poetry, the noble brotherhood who speak in tones of harmony, grandeur & pathos.”

James Grant Wilson (1832–1914) Union Army general

Preface to Poets & Poetry of Scotland Vol 1 , Blackie & Son , Edinburgh 1876

Related topics