Quotes About Truth

It is not what "they" think; it is what I know. What I know is more important to me than a mistaken belief in someone else's mind.

But remember: "Accepting" does not necessarily mean "liking." "Accepting" does not mean we cannot imagine or wish for changes or improvements. It means experiencing, without denial or avoidance, that a fact is a fact.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.

I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.

When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best-beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!

She assured them,too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to stablish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

Tradition,—which sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers,—tradition is responsible for all contrary averments.

Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, --oftener sooner than late,-- is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or

Denn kein Mensch kann für längere Zeit sich selbst das eine und der Menge ein anderes Gesicht zeigen, ohne am Ende in Verwirrung zu geraten, welches das echt ist.

The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a kindred wilderness in the human child.

What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability, so to speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose.

Siate sinceri! Siate sempre sinceri! E mostrate francamente al mondo, se non proprio il vostro lato peggiore, almeno qualche aspetto, da cui possa essere noto il peggiore male che è in voi.

Yes! - these were her realities - all else had vanished!