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.
“I became a scientist because... it's like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold.”
"Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery", p. 133
Cloud Atlas (2004), Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (Part 1)
Epipsychidion (1821)
“In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.”
A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), p. 172
Context: Those who advocate the return to a gold standard do not always appreciate along what different lines our actual practice has been drifting. If we restore the gold standard, are we to return also to the pre-war conceptions of bank-rate, allowing the tides of gold to play what tricks they like with the internal price-level, and abandoning the attempt to moderate the disastrous influence of the credit-cycle on the stability of prices and employment? Or are we to continue and develop the experimental innovations of our present policy, ignoring the "bank ration" and, if necessary, allowing unmoved a piling up of gold reserves far beyond our requirements or their depletion far below them? In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
“Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations
“For washed in life's river,
My bright mane forever
Shall shine like the gold
As Iguard o'er the fold.”
Night, st. 6
Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)
Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,
1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)
“From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.”
From principles is derived probability, but truth is obtained only from facts. - Jesse Olney (1798 - 1872), The National Preceptor (Goodwin, 1830), Lesson LXXXV: "Select Sentences," rule # 19 (p. 171).
Misattributed
“Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
