Quotes About Truth

It is significantly more important to Rabih now that he remains attractive to Kirsten than that he is a truthful correspondent of the reality of his inner life.

Rather than militantly pursue both truth and affection, they discern the incompatibilities, and so divide their projects, making a wise separation between the chrysanthemums and the novel, between Laure Haymann and the Odette de Crecy, between the letter which gets sent and the one that stays hidden but nevertheless needs to be written.

La razón por la cual la vida puede tenerse por trivial, aunque en determinados momentos nos parezca tan hermosa, radica en que nos formamos ese juicio, por lo general, no a partir de la vida misma, sino a partir de las imágenes sin duda distintas que nada han preservado de la vida, y por consiguiente la juzgamos en términos desdeñosos.

We need to tell ourselves a little more of the truth because we pay too high a price for our concealments. We cut ourselves off from possibilities of growth. We shut out large portions of our minds and end up uncreative, tetchy, and defensive, while others around us have to suffer our irritability, gloom, manufactured cheerfulness, or defensive rationalizations.

True beauty is indeed the one thing incapable of answering the expectations of an over-romantic imagination.…

falsifications may occasionally need to be committed in the service of a goal higher still than accuracy:

The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter.

In the end, you can always convince yourself that a version of the truth is the truth itself.

History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It's a performance. It's entertainment. And if it isn't, make it so.

You don't put your life into books. You find it there.

I know what's required. It's perfectly simple: Justice.

Still as I've said all along, you can't polish a turd.

as I think Hebbel says, in a good play everyone is right.

On cherche dans un livre la confirmation de ses propres convictions.

I wanted to say that the literature may say that, but that literature doesn't.

The experience of cancer has taught me one important truth at least: that we are never - or never need be - alone.

Love and a cough cannot be hidden.

If you know something is true, you don't need to convince anyone of it. If you are trying to convince anyone, it is probably yourself.

Quit making believe you don't know. You do know. Act on it.

Everyone is continuously finding evidence to prove what they want to believe.

The images we impress upon our mind, especially when accompanied by emotion, yield the same experience whether they are true or fictional.

Love does not require you to make believe you are something you are not.

Acting as if your life is good is closer to the truth than acting as if it is not.

There is no such thing as a necessary evil.