Quotes about the truth
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
“Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.”
Source: Rinkitink in Oz
Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“One of the drawbacks to life is that it contains moments when one is compelled to tell the truth”
“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be." — P. C. Hodgell, in her 1994 novel Seeker's Mask.
Misattributed
Mayor Gherkin, Chapter 8, p. 120
Source: 2000s, At First Sight (2005)
Context: ... but what I eventually came to understand was that if a woman truly loves you, you can't always expect her to tell the truth. You see, women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they're not being truthful, more often than not it's because they think the truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn't mean they don't love you.
“…In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”
Source: Angels & Demons
“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
Tolstoy's Diaries (1985) edited and translated by R. F. Christian. London: Athlone Press, Vol 2, p. 512
Context: People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn't so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man. It can't be otherwise, because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It's only a matter of removing from this divine spark (the truth) everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold.
“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
“Truth is in things, and not in words.”
1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1785)
Source: Secrets of a Summer Night
1990s
Source: [Can Man Live Without God, 1994, 9780849939433, 12]
Source: The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library
As quoted in Gems of Thought (1888) edited by Charles Northend
“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
Baba (58)
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 1 (p. 3)
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
Source: Brave New World
Summations, Chapter 44
Source: Revelations of Divine Love
Context: Truth seeth God, and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is, a holy marvellous delight in God; which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are verily, there is Love verily, coming of them both. And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties made, and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.
Context: Truth seeth God, and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is, a holy marvellous delight in God; which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are verily, there is Love verily, coming of them both. And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties made, and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.
In which marvelling he seeth his God, his Lord, his Maker so high, so great, and so good, in comparison with him that is made, that scarcely the creature seemeth ought to the self. But the clarity and the clearness of Truth and Wisdom maketh him to see and to bear witness that he is made for Love, in which God endlessly keepeth him.
“When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.”
Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood
Fall 1943
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Source: Journals Of Anais Nin Volume 3
“To tell you the truth, I've just been avoiding everything.”
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
John F. Kennedy: "Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America" (26 February 1962) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9075&st=&st1=<!-- Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project -->
1962
Context: We welcome the views of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain
“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”
Hercule Poirot
Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Context: Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
“There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.”
Variant: ... So I stopped talking about it. There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.
Source: The Reader
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.”
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake”
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain andA wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.
Perhaps there are times of inherent excellence</p
Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
“The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.”
Source: Inner Experience
Source: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
Source: The Lovely Bones
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
1129: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Variant: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Context: p>Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —</p
“Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.”
“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”
“We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.”
Source: The Virgin Suicides
“The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.”
“The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry.”
Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000) http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/cowokev8_intro.cfm/
Context: The real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on... At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial.
And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial...
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Source: Summa Contra Gentiles
Variant: It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)
“Everything to be imagined is an image of truth.”