Quotes About Truth

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them.

Metternich told lies all the time, and never deceived any one; Talleyrand never told a lie and deceived the whole world.

The thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the sincere thing.

Remember the sufferings of Christ, the storms that were weathered... the crown that came from those sufferings which gave new radiance to the faith... All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort, no one ever wins the crown.

You got to knock a man down and put your knife at his throat before he'll hear you, like I did to that trooper. The truth seems hateful to most everybody.

When you run into a story of more than three against one and one winning, then you have heard a lie.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.

What most people want to keep under wraps (from reporters) is trivial: petty jealousies, professional feuds, etc. By contrast, most of the things they have thought about most seriously all their lives they are perfectly winning to uncover.

Books may preach when the author cannot, when the author may not, when the author dares not, yes, and which is more, when the author is not.

The more any man is in the contemplation of truth, the more fairer and firmer impression is made upon his heart by truth.

Godly lives convince more than miracles themselves.

Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer; But Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour.

Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years: generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not but three oaks.

You may make as many fair speeches as you choose, but you lie.

she grasped the terrible truth that love can never be compelled, from man, from sprite, from beast; that one who loves, however she longs for requital, however long she waits, may receive in return the reverse of what she gives, the dark side of the moon.

So what did you think the devil would look like? If he were red with a tail, horns, and cloven hooves, any fool could say no.

Rightly known, God illumines all reality, all human experience, all revelation, and all religion

no human wisdom is more reliable than the actual history in which God is omnipresent.

Christ is the unparalleled and unrepeatable Revealer through whom other revelations are best understood

Every experienced pastor knows that what the penitent heart says about itself is much more consequential than well-made truthful sentences that shout from the outside of the inner voice of conscience. No element of confession is more crucial than the discipline of listening. The attentive listener is a chosen agent of divine reconciliation. When the moment for keen listening is offered, take it as an inestimable gift.