
James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
Misattributed
The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
Misattributed
Quoted by [Three years ago today: Trump promised “I will always tell you the truth”, Jon, Perr, August 18, 2019, January 16, 2021, Daily Kos, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/18/1879762/-Three-years-ago-today-Trump-promised-I-will-always-tell-you-the-truth]).
2016, August 2016
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Against the Galilaeans (c. 362)
Context: All of us, without being taught, have attained to a belief in some sort of divinity, though it is not easy for all men to know the precise truth about it, nor is it possible for those who do know it to tell it to all men. … Surely, besides this conception which is common to all men, there is another also. I mean that we are all by nature so closely dependent on the heavens and the gods that are visible therein, that even if any man conceives of another god besides these, he in every case assigns to him the heavens as his dwelling-place; not that he thereby separates him from the earth, but he so to speak establishes the King of the All in the heavens as in the most honourable place of all, and conceives of him as overseeing from there the affairs of this world. What need have I to summon Hellenes and Hebrews as witnesses of this? There exists no man who does not stretch out his hands towards the heavens when he prays; and whether he swears by one god or several, if he has any notion at all of the divine, he turns heavenward. And it was very natural that men should feel thus.
“Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.”
Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
Festus (1839)
“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
Interview by Bill Moyers, "Fritz Hollings on Making Government Work," http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07252008/profile3.html Bill Moyers Journal (2008-07-25)