TRUTH

Related Subjects: Candor, Facts, Honesty, Lies, Reality

1. Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.—AMIEL
   

2. Great is truth and mighty above all things.—Apocrypha: I Esdras
   

3. No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.—BACON, Of Truth
   

4. The contrary is probably just as true.—BEETHOVEN
   

5. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.—Bible, John 8:32
   

6. A truth that's told with bad intent
   Beats all the lies you can invent.—BLAKE, Proverbs
   

7. So absolutely good is truth, truth never hurts
   The teller.—BROWNING, Fifine at the Fair
   

8. The truth was felt by instinct here,—
   Process which saves a world of trouble and time.—BROWNING, The Ring and the Book
   

9. Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.—BURKE, Speech on Conciliation with America
   

10. For truth is precious and divine,—
    Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.—SAMUEL BUTLER, Hudibras
    

11. 'Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange,—
    Stranger than fiction.—BYRON, Don Juan
    

12. Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but is all still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless changes.—CARLYLE, Sir Walter Scott
    

13. I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote
    

14. "Old things need not be therefore true,"
    O brother men, nor yet the new.—A. H. CLOUGH
    

15. Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of com­municating truth.—COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria
    

16. It makes all the difference in the world whether one puts truth in the first place or in the second.—COLERIDGE
    

17. Truth does not depart from human nature. If what is regarded as truth departs from human nature it may not be regarded as truth.—CONFUCIUS, Analects
    

18. For truth has such a face and such a mien,
    As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.—DRYDEN, The Hind & the Panther
    

19. Great is truth. Fire cannot burn, nor water drown it.—DUMAS, The Count of Monte Cristo
    

20. The truth does not vary because men forget or ignore or traduce it.—IRWIN EDMAN, I Believe
    

21. The highest compact we can make with our fellow is,—
    "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."—EMERSON, Conduct of Life
    

22. Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted.—FRANKLIN
    

23. Truth is the nursing mother of genius. No man can be absolutely true to himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance, without becoming original for there is in every creature a fountain of life which, if not choked back by stones and other dead rubbish, will create a fresh atmosphere, and bring to life fresh beauty.—MARGARET FULLER
    

24. Dear, dear! Well, I always say—when you once begin to tell the truth, it don't do to stop sudden.—GALSWORTHY, The Show
    

25. Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway,
    And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray.—GOLDSMITH, The Deserted Village
    

26. Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie;
    A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.—GEORGE HERBERT, The Church Porch
    

27. Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.—THOMAS HOBBES, Leviathan
    

28. Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies;
    And sure he will: for Wisdom never lies.—HOMER, Odyssey
    

29. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
    He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
    He hath loosed the fateful lightning of
    His terrible, swift sword;
    His truth is marching on.—JULIA WARD HOWE, Battle Hymn of the Republic
    (Source of title of novel by John Steinbeck)
    

30. It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.—THOMAS H. HUXLEY, The Coming of Age of "The Origin of Species"
    

31. Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.—THOMAS H. HUXLEY, The Coming of Age of "The Origin of Species"
    

32. The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.—BEN JONSON, Catiline's Conspiracy
    

33. Truth is the trial of itself
    And needs no other touch,
    And purer than the purest gold,
    Refine it ne'er so much.—BEN JONSON, On Truth
    

34. The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.—FRANZ KAFKA, The Great Wall of China

35. A forced truth, like a forced peace, has no enduring value.—SIR ARTHUR KEITH, I Believe
    

36. The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.—ARTHUR KOESTLER, Darkness at Noon
    

37. The veracity which increases with old age is not far from folly.—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Maxims
    

38. Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.—LINCOLN
    

39. If the truth hurts most of us so badly that we don't want it told, it hurts even more grievously those who dare to tell it. It is a two-edged sword, often deadly dangerous to the user.—JUDGE BEN LINDSEY, The Revolt of Modern Youth
    

40. Truth is divided up into sectional compartments, presumably for greater ease of apprehension, so that a part often seems of more value than the whole. And the party walls are well safeguarded, only a few here and there are permeable. Permeability is generally regarded as dangerous, because liable to a leakage or inlet of heresy.—SIR OLIVER LODGE, Demonstrated Survival
    

41. If you suppress truth, if you hide truth, if you do not rise up and speak out in meeting, if you speak out in meeting without speaking the whole truth, then you are less true than truth.—JACK LONDON
    

42. Great Truths are portions of the soul of man.—LOWELL, Sonnet VI
    

43. Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.—LOWELL, L'Envoi
    

44. Truth forever on the scaffold,
    Wrong forever on the throne.—LOWELL, The Present Crisis
    

45. There is another way to truth: by the minute examination of facts. That is the way of the scientists: a hard and noble and thankless way. It is not the way of the great poet, the rare unreasonable who comes once in ten generations. He apprehends truth by power: the truth which he apprehends cannot be defined, save by greater power, and there is no greater power.—JOHN MASEFIELD, Shakespeare
    

46. Man with his burning soul
    Has but an hour of breath
    To build a ship of Truth
    In which his soul may sail
    Sail on the sea of death
    For death takes toll
    Of beauty, courage, youth,
    Of all but Truth.—JOHN MASEFIELD, Truth
    

47. If we say truth, we also say freedom and justice; if we speak of freedom and justice, we mean truth.—THOMAS MANN, The Coming Victory of Democracy
    

48. Truth uttered before its time is always dangerous.—MENCIUS
    

49. The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.—H. L. MENCKEN
    

50. Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.—MILTON, The Reason of Church Government

51. Truth is as impossible to be soiled by an outward touch as the sunbeam.—MILTON, Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce
    

52. Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?—MILTON, Areopagitica
    

53. I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older.—MONTAIGNE, Essays
    

54. I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.—SIR ISAAC NEWTON, Brewster's Memoirs of Newton
    

55. Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.—THEODORE PARKER, A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion
    

56. Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.—THEODORE PARKER, A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion
    

57. Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.—WILLIAM PENN, Fruits of Solitude
    

58. All men naturally have some love of truth.—Proverb
    

59. Face to face, the truth comes out.—Proverb
    

60. Follow truth too close at the heels 'twill strike out your teeth.—Proverb
    

61. Truth needs not many words; but a false tale a large preamble.—Proverb
    

62. Truth may be blamed, but shall never be shamed.—Proverb
    

63. That must be true which all men say.—Proverb
    

64. All truth is not to be told at all times.—Proverb
    

65. Great is truth and shall prevail,
    Therefore must we weep and wail.—LAURA E. RICHARDS, The Mameluke and the Hospodar
    

66. I believe that in the course of history—but only on condition that civilization is not interrupted by catastrophe—truth will be approached more and more closely.—JULES ROMAINS, I Believe
    

67. The only way I can argue impersonally for integrity and reality, truth and imagination, in art, in living, and in the theatre, is to argue specifically—with my own work as a basis for comparison.—WILLIAM SAROYAN, Introduction: My Heart's in the Highlands
    

68. I regret very much that to speak the truth in our day appears to be bad taste. I find, however, that even at the risk of seeming to be a boor I must still say what I truly believe. I believe that time, with its infinite understanding, will one day forgive me.—WILLIAM SAROYAN, Introduction: My Heart's in the Highlands
    

69. While you live, tell truth and shame the devil!—SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV
    

70. The naked truth.—SHAKESPEARE, Love's Labour's Lost
    

71. Truth is truth
    To the end of reckoning.—SHAKESPEARE, Measure for Measure
    

72. Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
    

73. Truth hath a quiet breast.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard II
    

74. And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
    And captive good attending captain ill.—SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet LXVI
    

75. Most true it is that I have looked on truth
    Askance and strangely.—SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet CX
    

76. Now is the time to pull ourselves together—to feel our muscle—to realise the value of our strength and pluck, and to tell the truth un­ashamed like men of courage and character, not to shirk it like the official apologists of a Foreign Office plot.—BERNARD SHAW, to Lillah McCarthy
    

77. How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!—LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH, Afterthoughts
    

78. Mere white truth in simple nakedness.—TENNYSON, Idylls of the King
    

79. The golden guess
    Is morning-star to the full round of truth.—TENNYSON, Columbus
    

80. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.—THOREAU, Walden
    

81. Analogy is milk for babes, but abstract truths are strong meat.—MARTIN F. TUPPER, Of Education
    

82. This is petrified truth.—MARK TWAIN, A Complaint about Correspondents
    

83. Truth is such a precious article let us all economize in its use.—MARK TWAIN
    

84. I am all for truth. But The Truth, in the Pauline sense of the world, is as little to my liking as cyanide of potassium.—VAN LOON, I Believe
    

85. Love truth, but pardon error.—VOLTAIRE, Discours sur l'Homme
    

86. There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.—VOLTAIRE
    

87. There is nothing so powerful as truth,—and often nothing so strange.—DANIEL WEBSTER
    

88. Truths that wake,
    To perish never.—WORDSWORTH, Ode on Intimations of Immortality
    

89. I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.—JOHN WYCLIFFE, A Short History of the English People

90. If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.—EMILE ZOLA, J'accuse
    

91. I know none of the people I accuse. I have never seen them. I bear them neither rancour nor hatred. They are no more to me than entities, spirits of social mischief. And the act I am performing here is but a revolutionary means to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.
    
    I have but one passion-the truth-in the name of humanity which has suffered so much, and has a right to happiness. My flaming protest is but the cry of my heart. Then let them dare to force me into the Assize Court and hold the enquiry in broad daylight! I am waiting.—EMILE ZOLA, J'accuse