Quotes About Truth

You are going to a place of deep darkness and lies, and if you will light one candle of truth, you will dispel the darkness. (to Benjamin Nethanyahu when he became Israel's UN Ambassador)

Do not be satisfied with the speech of your lips and the thought in your heart, all the promises and good sayings in your mouth, and all the good thoughts in your heart; rather you must arise and do.

When a man makes a reverent face before a face that is no face — that is idol worship.

What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.

Belief is the enemy of a storyteller

Reality never meets our wants, and adjusting both is why we tell stories.

But to paraphrase the ever-paraphraseable Freud, who said something to the effect that when you speak about the past you lie with every breath you take, I will say this: When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma.

No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

The memory seems both real and unreal, reliable and tenuous, solid and insubstantial.

It's just that our memories are rarely where we think they are.

If I tell the truth—and I should, shouldn't I?—I translate books with my invented system because it makes time flow more gently. That's the primary reason, I think. As Camus said in The Fall: "Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Uncle Jihad used to say that what happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us. My father and I may have shared numerous experiences, but, as I was constantly finding out, we rarely shared their stories; we din't know how to listen to one another.

Memory, memoir, autobiography - lies, lies, all lies.

When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma.

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.

To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.

Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law.

Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol.

Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.

A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.

If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.