Quotes About Truth

How paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed.

Reality is the cleverest of our enemies. It directs its attacks at those points in our heart where we were not expecting them, and where we had prepared no defense. Had Albertine been lying to her aunt then, when she said every day that she was going to the Buttes-Chaumont, or to me when she said that she had never been there?

The truth is the most cunning of enemies. It launches its attacks upon the points of our heart at which we were not expecting them, and have prepared no defence.

But one reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one's mistress. We are beaten and happy because we believe ourselves unbeaten and victorious

A large part of what we believe to be true (and this applies even to our final conclusions) with a persistence equalled only by our sincerity, springs from an original misconception of our premisses.

It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself.

Pois como a medicina é um compêndio dos erros sucessivos e contraditórios dos médicos, recorrendo aos melhores destes, corre-se o risco de solicitar uma verdade que será reconhecida falsa alguns anos mais tarde. De modo que acreditar na medicina seria a suprema loucura se não acreditar nela não fosse loucura maior, pois desse amontoado de erros se desvencilharam com o tempo algumas verdades.

This reaction from the disappointment which great works of art cause at first may in fact be attributed to a weakening of the initial impression or to the effort necessary to lay bare the truth—two hypotheses which recur in all important questions, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them;

Really, it is unheard of, this spontaneous generation of falsehood. I do not ask who it was that told you, but it would be really interesting, in a field as limited as this, to work back from one person to another and find out how the story arose

putting adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants, listening at doors, seemed to him now to be precisely on a level with the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the interpretation of old monuments—so many different methods of scientific investigation with a genuine intellectual value and legitimately employable in the search for truth.

She refrained from uttering it? So at least I long believed, for at that time I still supposed that it was by means of words that one communicated the truth to others.

A verdade que depositamos nas palavras não abre caminho diretamente, não tem irresistível evidência. Cumpre que decorra o tempo necessário para que se possa formar no interlocutor uma verdade da mesma espécie. E então o adversário político, que, apesar de raciocínios e provas, considerava traidor ao sectário da doutrina oposta, chega a compartilhar das detestadas convicções quando já não interessam àquele que antes tentava inutilmente difundi-las.

The true greatness of art is to find, grasp, and bring out that reality which we all live a great distance from; that reality which we run the risk of dying without having known, which is quite simply our own life.

for it is not only by dint of lying to other people, but also by lying to oneself that one ceases to be aware that one is lying,

But certain favourite parts are played by us so often before the public and rehearsed so carefully when we are alone that we find it easier to refer to their fictitious testimony than to that of a reality which we have almost entirely forgotten.

For the very ones who are right, like Françoise, have also to be wrong, so that Justice becomes an impossibility

with the slight emotion which a man feels when, even without being fully aware of what he is doing, he says something, not because it is true but because he enjoys saying it, and listens to his own voice uttering the words as though they came from some one else,

It is true that this person is to blame for having lied to us, for she had sworn to us that she would always tell us the truth. But we know from our own shortcomings, towards other people, how little an oath is worth.

Les faits ne pénètrent pas dans le monde où vivent nos croyances, ils n'ont pas fait naître celles-ci, ils ne les détruisent pas.

bij alles wat het stempel draagt van de werkelijke dood, die zo verschilt van zijn logische en abstracte mogelijkheid ...

I had always believed that right was like north to my father: a thing as real as sunlight, a place on the map, the arrow on a compass.

I had always believed that right was like north to my father: a thing as real as sunlight, a place on the map, the arrow on a compass. It was the unalterable facts of duty, love, and conscience. But our world had gone so far north that the compass could make no sense of it, could only spin hopelessly in it binnacle. North had melted right off the map.

Everybody is convinced they have seen something others have not seen, and they delude themselves that they have thought things that other have it thought, but this is just because someone has taken the trouble to tell an ordinary story in an extraordinary way.

If large portions of the world remain unseen or inaccessible to us, we must consider the meaning of the word "reality" with great care.