Quotes About Truth

For the most dangerous of all forms of concealment is that of the crime itself in the mind of the guilty party. His permanent consciousness of it prevents him from imagining how generally it is unknown, how readily a complete lie would be accepted, and on the other hand from realising at what degree of truth other people will detect, in words which he believes to be innocent, a confession.

When you heard anyone in the middle of a talk which was being deliberately kept off the Affair announce furtively some piece of political news, generally false but always devoutly to be wished, you could induce from the nature of his predictions where his heart lay.

The truth which one puts into one's words does not make a direct path for itself, is not supported by irresistible evidence.

La vraie vie, [...] c'est la littérature.

The valet de chambre had entered. I did not tell him that I had rung several times, for I realized that hitherto all I had done was to dream that I had rung. I was alarmed to think, however, that this dream had had the clarity of a cognition. Could cognition, by the same token, have the unreality of a dream?

For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognised in a few years' time.

Los hechos no penetran en el mundo donde viven nuestras creencias, y como no les dieron vida no las pueden matar; pueden estar desmintiéndolas constantemente sin debilitarlas, y un alud de desgracia o enfermedades que una tras otra padece una familia, no le hace dudar de la bondad de su Dios ni de la pericia de su médico.

A mentira é essencial à humanidade. Ela desempenha entre nós um papel tão grande, talvez, quanto o da procura do prazer, e, de resto, é comandada por essa procura. Mentimos para proteger nosso prazer ou nossa honra, se por acaso a divulgação do prazer é contrária à honra. Mentimos durante a vida toda, e sobretudo, e talvez somente, àqueles que nos amam. Só estes, realmente, nos fazem recear a sorte de nosso prazer e desejar-lhes a estima.

Talvez o nada é que seja a verdade e todo o nosso sonho não exista, mas sentimos então que essas frases musicais, essas noções que existem em função do sonho, não hão de ser nada tampouco. Pereceremos, mas temos como reféns essas divinas cativas que seguirão a nossa sorte. E a morte com elas tem alguma coisa de menos amargo, de menos inglório, de menos provável, talvez.

Não há nada como o desejo para impedir que as coisas que se dizem possuam qualquer semelhança com o que se tem no pensamento.

It is one of the most dreadful things for the lover that, while particular facts—which only the test of experience, or even spying, can verify from among so many possibilities—are so difficult to unearth, the truth, on the other hand, is so easy to discover or simply to intuit.

I said something friendly or even admiring to her. She was like almost all women, who imagine that the compliment they receive is a strict expression of the truth, that it is a judgment passed impartially, irresistibly, as though it applied to an art object unconnected with a particular individual. And so it was with a seriousness that made me blush at my own hypocrisy that she put the vain and artless question customary in such circumstances, "You like it?

No doubt I had long been prepared, by virtue of the sway exercised over my imagination and my ability to be moved by the example of Swann, to believe that what I feared was true, instead of what I would have wished for. Thus the comfort brought by Albertine's affirmations was all but compromised for a moment because I recalled the story of Odette.

There was only one thing she would not do for me, a thing she would have done only at the time when I would have cared nothing for it, and which she would have happily done then for that very reason: that is, tell me the truth.

Il devient dangereux au contraire quand, au lieu de nous éveiller à la vie personnelle de l'esprit, la lecture tend à se substituer à elle, quand la vérité ne nous apparaît plus comme un idéal que nous ne pouvons réaliser que par le progrès intime de notre pensée et par l'effort de notre cœur...

Per vaim rectam,

Indeed it seemed to me, in the moments when I suffered the least, that I almost benefited from her death, for a woman is all the more useful in our lives if she is an agent of sorrow rather than an element of happiness, and there is not a single woman whose possession is as precious as the truths which she enables us to discover by making us suffer.

but the steps of thought we take during the lonely work of artistic creation all lead us downward, deeper into ourselves, the only direction that is not closed to us, the only direction in which we can advance, albeit with much greater travail, toward an outcome of truth. Moreover, friendship is not just devoid of virtue, as conversation is, it is actively pernicious.

É admirável como o ciúme, que passa o tempo a fazer pequenas suposições do que é falso, tem pouca imaginação quando se trata de descobrir o que é verdadeiro.

the lie that tries to have us believe we are not inescapably alone in the world, and which, when we converse with someone, prevents us from admitting that it is not we who are speaking, that at such times we try to take on the semblance of other people, rather than be the self that differs from them.

?injenice nemaju pristušpa u svijet u kojemu žive naša uvjerenja, one ta uvjerenja nisu stvorile, pa ih ne mogu ni razoriti. ?injenice mogu uvjerenjima nametnuti najpouzdanija opovrgnu?a, a da ne proizvedu ni najmanji u?inak, a kamoli da ih oslabe.

Albertine would in any case either not have given me any answer or else a "no" in which the "n" would have been too hesitant and the "o" too resonant. Albertine never recounted facts that might harm her,

Não advertia que aquele detalhe verdadeiro tinha ângulos que só podiam encaixar-se nos detalhes contíguos do fato verdadeiro de que imprudentemente o destacara e que, quaisquer que fossem os detalhes inventados entre os quais o colocasse, sempre revelariam, pela matéria excedente e os vazios não preenchidos, que não era ali o seu lugar.

For, medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognised in a few years' time