Quotes about the truth page 18
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer
Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be." — P. C. Hodgell, in her 1994 novel Seeker's Mask.
Misattributed
Nicholas Sparks book At First Sight
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.
“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer
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?”
Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher
“Truth is in things, and not in words.”
Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1785)
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Secrets of a Summer Night
Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher
1990s
Source: [Can Man Live Without God, 1994, 9780849939433, 12]
Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist
Source: The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library
“Truth resides where there is faith.”
Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
As quoted in Gems of Thought (1888) edited by Charles Northend
“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner
Baba (58)
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
“I’ll tell you the truth and its up to you to live with it.”
William Goldman book The Princess Bride
Source: The Princess Bride
Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love
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.”
Roald Dahl book Boy
Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Fall 1943
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Source: Journals Of Anais Nin Volume 3
“To tell you the truth, I've just been avoiding everything.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“You knew the truth all along, Colie. That's all matters. You knew.”
Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon
Source: Keeping the Moon
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
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 --> <br class="br">1962 <br class="br">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.
Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain
“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”
Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
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.
“Learning the truth has become my life's love.”
Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code
Source: The Da Vinci Code
“There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.”
Bernhard Schlink book The Reader
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.”
Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.”
Lillian Hellman The Little Foxes
The Little Foxes (1939)
“The future would end up finding out the truth about the past.”
Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River
Source: Like the Flowing River
“Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
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
John Stuart Mill book On Liberty
Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Bruce D. Perry (1955) American psychiatrist
Source: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
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.”
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
“It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.”
Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid
Source: The Red Pyramid
“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”
Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer
“We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.”
Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides
Source: The Virgin Suicides
“The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.”
Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic
“The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker
Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000) http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/cowokev8_intro.cfm/ <br class="br">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.<br>And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial...
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church
Source: Summa Contra Gentiles
Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice
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)
