Browse 14859 quotes about Truth.
“Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.”
Source: Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study
“truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.”
Source: Poetical works
“Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative.”
Source: Importance of Practical Education and Useful Knowledge: Being a Selection from His Orations and Other Discourses
“For there is a virtue in truth; it has an almost mystic power. Like radium, it seems to give off forever and ever grains of energy, atoms of light.”
Source: Selected essays
“The usefullest truths are plainest; and while we keep to them, our differences cannot rise high.”
Source: Fruits of solitude in reflections and maxims relating to the conduct of human life
“Naked Truth needs no shift.”
Source: The Papers of William Penn, Volume 5: William Penn's Published Writings, 1660-1726: An Interpretive Bibliography
“Truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity.”
“There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.”
Source: Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem
“It is when people are told their own thoughts that they think they are being insulted.”
Source: Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard
“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.”
Source: Seven Gothic Tales
“Blessed be the God's voice; for it is true, and falsehoods have to cease before it!”
Source: Works
“The genuine essence of truth never dies.”
Source: On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History
“The thing is not only to avoid error, but to attain immense masses of truth.”
“A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.”
Source: Heroes and Hero Worship: The Historian
“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.”
Source: Darkness at noon
“All I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth.”
Source: A Little House sampler
“many people choose, early on, their own truths from the large smorgasbord available. And once they've chosen them, for good reason or no reason, they then proceed rather selectively, wisely gathering whatever will bolster them or at least carry out the color scheme.”
Source: I Didn't Come Here to Argue
“The germs of all truth lie in the soul, and when the ripe moment comes, the truth within answers to the fact without as the flower responds to the sun, giving it form for heat and color for light.”
Source: Essays in Literary Interpretation
“An unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed even in patent scales, nor brought to market.”
Source: Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues
“Knowledge, or more expressively truth,--for knowledge is truth received into our intelligence,--truth is an ideal whole.”
Source: Essays and Tales: Sketch of the author's life (p. i-ccxxxii) Shades of the dead. Critical essays. Lecture, on the worth of knowledge
“Truth is truth howe'er it strike.”
Source: The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.
“nothing good ever comes out of denying the truth about our situation.”
“Half-truths are the devil's IOUs.”
Source: Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self
“Old truths are always new to us, if they come with the smell of heaven upon them.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Bunyan (Illustrated)
“Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie than the will can choose an apparent evil.”
Source: Select essays on the belles lettres
“Pray over every truth; for though the renewed heart is not "desperately wicked," it is quite deceitful enough to become so, if God be forgotten a moment.”
Source: Charles Kingsley, His Letters and Memories of His Life
“One can lie, but truth is more interesting.”
Source: Four Plays
“All truth is precious, if not all divine; and what dilates the powers must needs refine.”
Source: The complete poetical works of William Cowper, with life and critical notice of his writings
“But what is truth? 'Twas Pilate's question put
To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply.”
Source: The task, Table talk, and other poems: With critical observations of various authors on his genius and character, and notes, critical and illustrative
“Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time, nor does it take away the freedom of speech which proceeds from justice; but it gives to us the knowledge of what is just and lawful, separating from them the unjust and refuting them.”
Source: Enchiridion
“Truth sometimes corner unawares upon Caution, and sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream.”
“Truth is always straightforward.”
“There is small chance of truth at the goal, where there is not childlike humility at the starting-post.”
Source: Coleridge's Aids to reflection: with the author's last corrections
“Truth is one;
And, in all lands beneath the sun,
Whoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity.”
Source: The complete poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier
“Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.”
Source: Literary recreations and miscellanies
“When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.”
Source: Pascal's Pensees
“It is only when one is thoroughly true that there can be purity and freedom. Falsehood always punishes itself.”
“So often the truth is told with hate, and lies are told with love.”
Source: Bingo
“The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.”
Source: Second words: selected critical prose
“Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)
“Having stopped expecting truth, we rarely get it.”
Source: Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life
“The truth of truths is love.”
Source: Festus: a poem
“Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.”
Source: Darkness and day
“there is not one in a hundred of either sex, who is not taken in when they marry. ... it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.”
“Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble finger, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.”
Source: Modern Painters: pt. 1. Of general principles. pt. 2 Of truth
“It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.”
Source: First and last notebooks
“The real truths are those that can be invented.”
“You cannot have both truth and what you call civilisation.”
Source: A Severed Head
“Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.”
“An enlightened person does not ignore things and does not stick to things, not even to the truth.”
Source: Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai