“Tis strange - but true; for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
Variant: For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Source: Don Juan
“Tis strange - but true; for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
Variant: For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
“Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies.”
John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise
Or, for that matter, as true.
Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 18
“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
1910s
Source: A Little Book in C Major (1916)
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
Scraps and Morsels (1960).
Context: Strange reading? It is meant to be. The world is full of romantic, macabre, improbable things which would never do in works of fiction. When those that come within one man's notice are gathered together in a scrapbook, they tell of a world which sobersided folk may not choose to recognize as their own. But it is their own; I have the evidence.
“Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.”
Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist
A System of Magick (1726).
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer
Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 2 “Palaces” (p. 72)
Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time
Le seul véritable voyage, le seul bain de Jouvence, ce ne serait pas d'aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d'avoir d'autres yeux, de voir l'univers avec les yeux d'un autre, de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d'eux voit, que chacun d'eux est.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. V: The Captive (1923), Ch. II: "The Verdurins Quarrel with M. de Charlus"
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Misquoted as "Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." by Laurence J. Peter in "Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time", among many others.
Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified