Quotes About Truth

What're you going to focus on? What's unfair, or all the wonderful things that happen? Both are true, both are real. Both need to be accepted. But which carries more weight with you?" Stephen tapped the boy's chest. "The terrible or the wonderful? The goodness or the cruelty?

They all had them. Secrets. But some stank more than others.

Gamache had asked not because he didn't know the answer, but because he wanted to see if Peter would lie to him. He had. And if he'd lie about that, what else had he lied about?

There are four statements that lead to wisdom. I want you to remember them and follow them. Are you ready?' Agent Lemieux had taken out his notebook and, pen poised, he'd listened. 'You need to learn to say: I don't know. I'm sorry. I need help and I was wrong.' Agent

the wiry, self-contained man had stared at him for a few seconds then invited him to sit and told him the four sentences that lead to wisdom. He'd said them only once, never repeating them. But once had been enough for Gamache. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don't know.

You're not quite as ignorant as you pretend, Chief Inspector." "Oh, my ignorance knows no bounds, Father.

the police were not the evil ones. The snake was already here.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Armand

The trial is about facts, but feelings are also a fact.

They believe in a virgin birth, a resurrection, walking on water and some old guy with a white beard floating in the sky and running the world, but this they find unbelievable?" Gamache was quiet for a moment, then nodded. "It is interesting," he agreed, "what people choose to believe." And what they'd do in the name of that faith.

A memory of a fear / that has now come true.

He knew she was right. But he could also feel his own conscience stirring. Accusing him of following the law, in lockstep. And marching right past common sense. Katie Evans was dead.

Stating a truth, but leaving out a greater truth.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Armand wondered if Florence understood that line from The Little Prince. He hadn't, as a child.

Of all the things we keep inside the worst are the secrets. The things we are so ashamed of, so afraid of, we need to hide them even from ourselves. Secrets lead to delusion and delusion leads to lies, and lies create a wall. Our secrets make us sick because they separate us from other people.

the answers lay in flesh and blood, not in a book and not in a report. And so often not even in things corporeal, but in something that couldn't be held and contained and touched. The answers to his questions lay in the murky past and in the emotions hidden there. The

People believe what they want to believe," said Reine-Marie. "It's just human nature.

If the first victim of war was the truth, some of the first victims of a murder investigation were people's lies.

The book was called How to Lie with Statistics.

The funny thing about Hell is that we assume it's obvious. Fire, brimstone. We'll be plunged into it by some horrific event in our lives. But the truth is, Hell can be as subtle as Heaven. He looked around. Sometimes we don't recognize we've wandered into Hell until it's too late.

Things were not as they seemed. The known world was shifting, reforming. Everything he'd taken as a given, a fact, as real and unquestioned, had fallen away. But

All the answers that sprang to mind were true, but there were levels to the truth.

He only stopped when he'd met himself again. The Armand who'd been standing on the side of the quiet road, in the middle of nowhere, waiting. At the intersection of truth and wishful thinking. Where the straight road splayed. And he knew then. They were all going down." p.40

The truth is I don't know whether Fair Day is a brilliant example of naive art, or the pathetic scrawling of a superbly untalented, and delusional, old woman. That's the tension.