Quotes About Truth

The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

We do not know what things look like, as you say," the beast said. "We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

Madeleine L'Engle

It is not the vaccinationists but the antivaccinationists who generate zeal. People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.

Nothing really important in life is in the realm of provable fact.

don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

The written word Should be clean as bone, Clear as light, Firm as stone. Two words are not As good as one. I

We are all broken, we human creatures, and to pretend we're not is to inhibit healing.

mother carefully turned over four slices of French toast, then said in a steady voice, "No, Meg. Don't hope it was a dream. I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

The Great God Science. It has failed us, because it was never meant to be a god, but only a few true scientists understand that.

But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand thinga for them to be.

If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning; there is no need to fear. But if it is not true, if it is man imposing strictures on God (as did the men of the Christian establishment of Galileo's day), then I want to be open to God, not to what man says about God.

Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories.

The well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only deny them their childhood, with its high creativity, but they would have them conform to the secular world, with its dirty devices. The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs but in truth.

But our fear and our rejection does not take away from truth, and truth is what the Bible instructs us to know in order that we may be free.

We don't know what things LOOK like, as you say, the beast said. We know what things ARE like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

I don't underestimate knowledge. But we get into trouble when we confuse it with truth.

All of Madeleine's writing, fiction and nonfiction, was an example of how all narrative is fiction, and all fiction can be true.

Juvenile or adult, War and Peace or Treasure Island, Pride and Prejudice or Beauty and the Beast, a great work of the imagination is one of the highest forms of communication of truth that mankind has reached. But a great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or to agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is.

It is not only in the religious writings of various peoples that I find truth. I find that my forbearance is widened, my understanding of human potential expanded, as I read fiction, even if it is only to disagree with a narrow or ugly view of life, or to turn away from discontent. The fiction to which I turn and return is that which has a noble understanding of God's purpose for all that has been created.